Glossary

#FYP (For Your Page)

#FYP is a hashtag that TikTok users place in their videos to prioritize their content on other users' "Your Page" feed. This feed algorithmically sends users content from people you follow or related to hashtags you might be interested in. 

A/B Testing

This is the process of comparing two variations of a single variable to determine which performs best in order to help improve marketing efforts. This is often done in email marketing (with variations in the subject line or copy), calls-to-action (variations in colors or verbiage), and landing pages (variations in content). Outside of marketing, you can use it to determine what tastes better on a peanut butter sandwich: jelly or fluff.

Above the Fold

Content that appears on a website before the user scrolls. Google created the Page Layout Algorithm in 2012 to lower the rankings of websites featuring too many ads in this space.

AddThis

AddThis is a web-tracking technology company that offers a wide range of social media and content tools -- from responsive sharing buttons to custom follow buttons to recommended content plugins -- designed to help you increase engagement on your website and earn more followers on social media. 

AJAX

Asynchronous JavaScript and XML is a type of programming that allows a webpage to send and receive information from a server to change that page dynamically without reloading.

Algorithm

A collection of math complex formulas that are specially organized to be able to collect data, make determinations on that data, and distribute the data bases on the determinations that were made. The algorithms we know today are learning algorithms. Which means that they are able to modify the criteria used to make determinations independently.

Algorithm Change

Some algorithmic changes go completely unnoticed. However, the impact of a major algorithmic change can usually be seen quite quickly, though the change sometimes takes a few weeks to completely roll out. Algorithmic changes come in three forms:

Algorithm Update

The search engine changes certain signals of an existing algorithm.

Algorithm Refresh

The search engine re-runs an existing algorithm using the exact same signals as last time.

New Algorithm

The search engine adds a new algorithm to improve search quality. For example: Google Panda, Google Penguin.

Alignment

Alignment is the way that the different elements in a design are arranged, usually in relation to a page or document. In typography, alignment, which can also be called range, is the setting of text relative to a column, tab or page. It’s very easy to notice when elements in a design aren’t aligned.

Alt Attribute

HTML code that provides information used by search engines and screen readers (for blind and visually-impaired people) to understand the contents of an image. Also known as: Alt Text

AMA

AMA is an acronym for "ask me anything," which originated in a popular subreddit where users will use the term to prompt questions from other users. Since its inception, the term has gone on to be used in other online social settings, such as this discussion on Inbound.org.

AMP

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is an open-source HTML framework that allows a desktop-first page to be delivered faster on mobile. It was used as a criterion to gain visibility in the news Top Stories carousel. The AMP logo has since been removed from search results and Google announced that AMP is no longer a requirement for appearing in Top Stories. The emphasis is now on Core Web Vitals to measure faster delivery and page loading and the influence of AMP is now questionable.

Analogous Colors

Think of these as the neighbours of the color world—analogous colors are colors that sit next to each other on the color wheel. Think, in simple terms, red, orange and yellow—there’s a dominant color, a primary or secondary color and a tertiary color. Analogous colors match really well and create a proper color harmony—resulting in a composed design. A famous use of analogous colors in the iconic Pentagram-designed

Analytics

The science of collecting of performance based data, analyzing that data to find patterns, and studying those patterns to deepen your level of understanding of a wide range of concepts and topics.

Anchor Text

The clickable word or words of a link. This text is intended to provide contextual information to people and search engines about what the webpage or website being linked to is about. For instance, if you were creating a link to send your visitors to Normal Bear, “Normal Bear Media” is the anchor text.

Aperture

The white space at the end of an open counter in typography.

Apex

In typography, the top point where two strokes are joined together.

Application Programming Interface (API)

APIs are a series of rules in computer programming, which allow an application to extract information from a service and use that information either in their own application or in data analyses. It's kind of like a phone for applications to have conversations -- an API literally "calls" one application and gets information to bring to you to use in your software. APIs facilitate the data needed to provide solutions to customer problems.

Arm

When a horizontal stroke is not attached to a stem on one end.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The science of making computers perform tasks that require human intelligence. Rather than following a set of programmed rules (like an algorithm), an AI computer system is basically a digital brain that learns. AI can also make and carry out decisions without human intervention.

Ascenders

Ascenders refer to the parts of lower case letters that extend above the x-height of a typeface. If you look back at that first sentence, you’ll see loads of them—and that one too. In a majority of typefaces, the lowercase letters b, d, f, h, k and l are ascenders. Careful though, the letter t is not an ascender. In certain fonts, such as Garamond, the ascenders rise above the cap height.

Aspect ratio

Aspect ratio is most easily explained as the ratio of the width to the height of a rectangle—which usually, in design terms, is a picture or a screen. Aspect ratios are usually expressed as a mathematical ratio but, no fear, there’s no maths involved—it’s just two numbers separated by a colon. It’s usually width:height so, for instance, the aspect ratio for an iMac is 16:9—16 inches wide by 9 inches high.

Author Authority

Authority is a concept of using the reputation and credentials of a person who writes content online as a ranking factor. Originally, Google tested this in combination with Google+ but despite several patents filed, no evidence supports author authority as a ranking factor. Google is placing emphasis on E-A-T to reduce disinformation online, especially in YMYL niches such as health and finance. In these spaces, building the authority of an author is recommended for a brand to show credibility, even if it currently doesn’t influence ranking.

Authority

The combination of signals search engines use to assess websites and webpages for the purposes of ranking.

Avatar

An avatar is an image or username that represents a person online, most often within forums and social networks.

B2B (Business-to-Business)

Short for business-to-business. In B2B, the buying cycle is longer, products and services are more expensive, and the audience is professional decision-makers. For example, Google and Oracle are primarily B2B companies.

B2C (Business-to-Consumer)

Short for business-to-consumer. In B2C, the buying cycle is typically shorter (though it still varies by industry), products and services are (mostly) cheaper, and consumers are the audience. For example, Amazon, Apple, and Nike are primarily B2C companies.

Backlink

A link to a webpage that originates from an external website. For example, if Normal Bear were to link to Google, that would count as a backlink for Google; if Google were to link to Normal Bear, that would be a backlink for Normal Bear. Also Called: Inbound Link

Backslanted

Italics leaning backward.

Baidu

The most popular search engine in China, Baidu was founded in January 2000 by Robin Li and Eric Xu.

Ball Terminal

Ball-shape extension of a letter.

Baseline

In typography, the baseline is the invisible line that text sits on—think of it as the floor, but for text. It’s also the place that x-height and other important parts of a font are measured from. There is also parts of fonts that don’t sit on the baseline, but we’ll get to them later.

Bing

The name of Microsoft’s search engine. Bing launched in June 2009, replacing Microsoft Live Search (previously MSN Search and Windows Live Search). Since 2010, Bing has powered Yahoo’s organic search results as part of a search deal Microsoft and Yahoo struck in July 2009.

Bio

A bio on social media refers to a short bit of explainer text that explains who the user is. To see some examples, check out this roundup of some of the most amusing bios on Twitter.

Bitly

Bitly is a free URL shortening service that provides statistics for the links users share online. Bitly is popularly used to condense long URLs to make them easier to share on social networks such as Twitter.

Bitmoji

A Bitmoji is an avatar or emoji that users can create to look like them. Bitmojis can then be added to your personal or Snapchat keyboards so you can send them to fiends or use them in place of profile pictures.

Black Box

A complex computer program that is poorly understood. Inputs and outputs can be observed, but there is no access to the process itself due to its confidential nature. For example, Google’s algorithm is a black box.

Black Hat

Risky tactics that go against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Also see: Webspam

Bleed

That little bit extra—the bleed is a printing term that refers to the edge of the sheet that will be trimmed off. In design terms, the bleed is the artwork or background color that extends in to this area, in case the cut made to the design or sheet isn’t exact. It’s a way of ensuring that none of the design gets accidentally cut off or there’s no unexpected borders.

Blog

A publication of content, sorted in descending chronological order. The content can feature any type of information written by any number of people. Blogs were originally called web logs or weblogs. However, as “web log can also mean a server’s log files, the term was confusing. To avoid this confusion, the abbreviation “blog was coined, and became the common term.

Blog Talk Radio

Blog Talk Radio is a free web application that allows users to host live online radio shows.

Blogger

Blogger is a free blogging platform owned by Google that allows individuals and companies to host and publish a blog typically on a subdomain. Example: yourblogname.blogspot.com

Blogging

This is short for web log or weblog. An individual or group of people usually maintains a blog. A personal blog or business blog will traditionally include regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material, such as photos and video. Blogging is a core component of inbound marketing, as it can accomplish several initiatives simultaneously -- like website traffic growth, thought leadership, and lead generation. It does not, however, do your taxes.

BoardReader

BoardReader is a free search engine that allows users to search for keywords only in posts and titles of online forums, a popular form of social networking.

Body Copy

The main text that people will read on a design. The body copy refers to the paragraphs, sentences or other text that are the main content in any publication, whether print or digital. Put in real life terms, the body copy of a magazine is the articles themselves rather than the titles, subtitles, authors, etc.

Bold

A heavy weight of any given typeface, often used for emphasis.

Bookmarking

Bookmarking online follows the same idea of placing a bookmark in a physical publication -- you're simply marking something you found important, enjoyed, or want to continue reading later. The only difference online is that it's happening through websites using one of the various bookmarking services available, such as Pocket, or right within your browser. hbspt.cta._relativeUrls=true;hbspt.cta.load(53, 'a97a79c4-49cd-436f-af3b-1f74b8dd69b8', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"});

Bot

See: Crawler, Googlebot

Bottom of the Funnel

Typically, next steps for leads at this stage are a call from a sales rep, a demo, or a free consultation -- depending on what type of business is attempting to close the lead.

Bounce Rate

Website bounce rate

The percentage of people who land on a page on your website and then leave without clicking on anything else or navigating to any other pages on your site. A high bounce rate generally leads to poor conversion rates because no one is staying on your site long enough to read your content or convert on a landing page (or for any other conversion event).

Email bounce rate

The rate at which an email was unable to be delivered to a recipient's inbox. A high bounce rate generally means your lists are out-of-date or purchased, or they include many invalid email addresses. In email, not all bounces are bad, so it's important to distinguish between hard and soft bounces before taking an email address off your list.

SEO Implication

Google says bounce rate, as it is reported from analytics tools, isn't a direct ranking factor because there are good reasons a person would leave your site quickly. For example, if the search intent is informational and the user gets the information they need quickly from your site, Google will want to put your page ahead of others.

Bowl

The generally round or elliptical forms which are the basic body shape of letters such as C, G, O in the uppercase, and b, c, e, o, p in the lowercase.

Bracket

A curved connection between the stem and serif of some fonts. Not all serifs are bracketed serifs.

Brand Identity

The visual version of a brand. The brand identity is made up of everything that relates to the brand—logos, typefaces, color palettes, slogans, tone of voice, website, packaging and other marketing material. When designers talk about ‘branding’, it usually involves developing all aspects of the brand identity.

Branded Keyword

When a user’s query includes an exact match, or variation, of a specific company or brand name. For instance, “Normal Bear”, “NB”, “normalbear.com”, and “Normal Bear SEO 101 Guide” are a few examples of branded keywords.

Breadcrumb

A navigational element that helps users easily figure out where they are within a website. See: Website Navigation

Broken Link

A link that leads to a 404 not found. Typically, a link becomes broken when: a website goes offline, a webpage is removed without implementing a redirect, or the destination URL is changed without implementing a redirect.

Business Blogging

Business blogging retains all the attributes of "regular" blogging, but adds a tasty layer of marketing strategy on top. It helps marketers drive traffic to their website, convert that traffic into leads, establish authority on certain topics, and drive long-term results. When blogging for a business, marketers should create posts that are optimized with keywords that their target audience is searching for and provide helpful, educational material to these readers. Typically, these blog posts should be actionable (by providing an opt-in, downloadable offer), as to provide a metric for the effectiveness of the business blogging. Since we’re going alphabetically, the last part of the funnel process is first! So, “bottoms up,” I suppose. The bottom of the funnel refers to a stage of the buying process leads reach when they’re just about to close as new customers. They’ve identified a problem, have shopped around for possible solutions, and are very close to buying.

Buyer Persona

A semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers. While it helps marketers like you define their target audience, it can also help sales reps qualify leads.

"Content is King”

A phrase often used by speakers at conferences and writers on popular SEO (and digital marketing) publications. In this context, “content is king” usually means that content is essential for you to have any SEO, digital marketing, or business success. This phrase actually dates back to a Bill Gates essay, “Content is King”, published January 3, 1996.

Cache

A technology that temporarily stores web content, such as images, to reduce future page loading times.

Cached Page

A snapshot of a webpage as it appeared when a search engine last crawled it.

Call-to-Action

A call-to-action is a text link, button, image, or some type of web link that encourages a website visitor to visit a landing page and become of lead. Some examples of CTAs are “Subscribe Now” or “Download the Whitepaper Today.” These are important for marketers because they’re the “bait” that entices a website visitor to eventually become a lead. So, you can imagine that it’s important to convey a very enticing, valuable offer on a call-to-action to better foster visitor-to-lead conversion.

Calligraphy

The art of writing letters with a very specific tool (e.g., broad nib pen, brush pen, etc.).

CAN-SPAM

CAN-SPAM stands for "Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing." It's a U.S. law passed in 2003 that establishes the rules for commercial email and commercial messages, it gives recipients the right to have a business stop emailing them, and outlines the penalties incurred for those who violate the law. For example, CAN-SPAM is the reason businesses are required to have an "unsubscribe" option at the bottom of every email.

Canonical URL

An HTML code element that specifies a preferred website URL, when multiple URLs have the same or similar content, to reduce duplicate content. Also known as canonicalization.

Canva

Canva is an easy-to-use design tool for non-designers and designers alike. The tool offers several templates that adhere to the required dimensions for sharable social images on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. 

Cap Height

Back to our friend the baseline—the cap height is the height of the top of a capital letter in any given font above the baseline. The cap height refers specifically to letters with a flat top, such as H and I. Round letters like ‘O’ and pointed ones like ‘A” may rise above the cap height in their capital forms.

CASL

CASL stands for "Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation." It's a Canadian law passed in 2013 that covers the sending of "commercial electronic messages" that may be accessed by a computer in Canada. CASL covers email, texts, instant messages, and automated cell phone messages sent to computers and phones in Canada.

ccTLD

A country-code top-level domain. For instance, a company based in the United Kingdom would have a domain like this: www.example.co.uk, where uk is the ccTLD.

Centre Aligned

When text is aligned to the centre of a text frame, with the rag on the left and right sides of the text frame.

Character

A letter, number, punctuation mark or symbol.

Character Set

Entire collection of characters for any given typeface weight.

Chat

Chat can refer to any kind of communication over the internet but traditionally refers to one-to-one communication through a text-based chat application, commonly referred to as instant messaging (IM) applications.

Churn Rate

A metric that measures how many customers you retain and at what value. To calculate churn rate, take the number of customers you lost during a certain time frame, and divide that by the total number of customers you had at the very beginning of that time frame. (Don't include any new sales from that time frame.) For example, if a company had 500 customers at the beginning of October and only 450 customers at the end of October (discounting any customers that were closed in October), their customer churn rate would be: (500-450)/500 = 50/500 = 10%. Churn rate is a significant metric primarily for recurring revenue companies. Regardless of your monthly revenue, if your average customer does not stick around long enough for you to at least break even on your customer acquisition costs, you’re in trouble.

Circles

Circles are clusters of a user's friends, colleagues, family, or connections on the now-discontinued Google+. On the platform, you got to choose who went in what Circle, and what you shared with those individuals.

Citation

In Local SEO, a citation is any mention online of a brand Name, Address or Phone number (NAP). Citations are usually found in directories, social network and community profiles, website resources lists, or any mention of a brand online that does not include a link to the website. NAPs can influence ranking and visibility on Google maps.

Click Depth

Click depth is the number of clicks it takes to get from the home page, or an entrance page, to a destination page on a website. The more clicks it takes, the less likely Google will crawl the page or it will rank. Pages that are the closest to the homepage are considered to be the most authoritative and the most likely to be crawled and indexed by Google. Click depth is important for pages to be crawled efficiently and for the flow of link equity; therefore does influence ranking indirectly.

Clickbait

Clickbait is a term to describe marketing or advertising material that employs a sensationalized headline to attract clicks. They rely heavily on the "curiosity gap" by creating just enough interest to provoke engagement. 

Clickthrough Rate (CTR)

The percentage of your audience that advances (or clicks through) from one part of your website to the next step of your marketing campaign. As a mathematic equation, it’s the total number of clicks that your page or CTA receives divided by the number of opportunities that people had to click (ex: number of pageviews, emails sent, and so on).

Cloaking

Showing different content or URLs to people and search engines. A violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Closed-Loop Marketing

The practice of closed-loop marketing is being able to execute, track and show how marketing efforts have impacted bottom-line business growth. An example would be tracking a website visitor as they become a lead to the very last touch point when they close as a customer. When done correctly, you’d be able to see just how much of your marketing investment yielded new business growth. One of the biggest business benefits of implementing an inbound marketing strategy and utilizing inbound marketing software is the ability to execute closed-loop marketing.

CMS

Stands for Content Management System. A web-based application that lets people create, upload, and manage digital assets.

CMYK

RGB’s printing brother, CMYK, is the color mode which should be used when designing for print. The four colors the name stands for, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (Black), are the four colors most widely used in printing. Similarly to RGB, these four colors can be combined in lots of different ways to produce a majority of colors in print—though, unlike RGB, these colors are subtractive so get darker as they are combined. Key/black is added on top of the other three as mixing them will never produce a pure black.

Co-Citation

How frequently two websites (or webpages) are mentioned together by a third-party website, even if those first two items don’t link to (or reference) each other. This is a way search engines can establish subject similarity. For instance, imagine Google and Bing never linked to or mentioned each other. However, other websites and blogs would likely mention both Google and Bing on lists of popular search engine news publications.

Code To Text Ratio

The amount of text displayed on a page compared to the amount of code used to construct the page is called the code to text ratio. A higher ratio of text to code is considered to provide a better user experience but is not a direct ranking factor.

Collective Intelligence

Collective intelligence is a shared intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision-making in social networks.

Comment

A comment is a response that is often provided as an answer or reaction to a blog post or message on a social network. 

Comment Spam

Poorly written comments, often off-topic and self-promotional, posted by spambots in the hopes of getting a free (but ultimately worthless) link.

Community Manager

The community manager is responsible for building and managing the online communications for a business in an effort to grow an online community.

Compete

Compete is a web-based application that offers users and businesses web analytics. It also enables people to compare and contrast the statistics for different websites over time.

Competition

There are two types of competition in SEO:

Direct Competition

Companies that sell similar products and/or services, serve the same needs, and target a similar audience both online and offline.

SEO Competition

Companies that vie for the same keywords and organic search visibility, but with unalike products or services that address different needs and/or target audiences.

Complementary Colors

Think of these as the best friends of the color world—complementary colors are the colors that sit directly opposite each other on the color wheel. Examples of complementary colors are red and green, blue and orange and purple and yellow. Using complementary colors will make a design more aesthetically pleasing—and can also be used in things like logos and retail displays to make a design stand out more.

Connections

The LinkedIn equivalent of a Facebook 'friend' is a 'connection.' Because LinkedIn is a social networking site, the people you are connecting with are not necessarily people you are friends with, but rather professional contacts that you've met, heard speak, done business with, or know through another connection. Connections are categorized by: 1st degree, 2nd degree, and 3rd degree.

Content

Content is a synonym for art, resource, or media used in a marketing/commercial context to keep an audience engaged. If you paint a tree it's art. If you paint a tree and add to all of your social media channels, it's content.

SEO Implications: Search engines want to reward pages and sites that are useful, informative, valuable, credible, unique, and engaging because the more frequently a search engine provides those things to the user, the more frequently the user will use the search engine. Content is the quickest easiest and most impactful way to provide those experiences to the user.

Content Management System (CMS)

A web application designed to make it easy for non-technical users to create, edit, and manage a website. Helps users with content editing and more "behind-the-scenes" work like making content searchable and indexable, automatically generating navigation elements, keeping track of users and permissions, and more.

Content Optimization System (COS)

A COS is basically a CMS (Content Management System), but optimized to deliver customers the most personalized web experience possible.

Context

If content is king, then context is queen. Serving up valuable content is important, but ensuring that it’s customized for the right audience is equally (if not more) important. As buyers become more in control of what information they digest (again, not literally), it’s important to deliver content that’s contextually relevant. If you own a restaurant, you wouldn’t want to send a coupon for a steak dinner to a vegetarian, right? Unless you’re anti-herbivore, of course …

Contrast

Contrast is the arrangement of opposite elements on a page—in other words, when two things on a page are different. This can be light vs. dark colors, smooth vs. rough textures, text color vs. background color. Contrast can be used to create areas of visual interest or even drama within a design.

Conversion

When a user completes a desired action on a website. Examples of conversions include: subscribing to an email newsletter, downloading premium content, completing a form, adding items to a shopping cart, or completing a purchase.

Conversion Path

A conversion path is a series of website-based events that facilitate lead capture. In its most basic form, a conversion path will consist of a call-to-action (typically a button that describes an offer) that leads to a landing page with a lead capture form, which redirects to a thank you page where a content offer resides. In exchange for his or her contact information, a website visitor obtains a content offer to better help them through the buying process. If you’re still having difficulty grasping the topic based on this description, feel free to absorb it as a rabbit hunting analogy in comic form.

Conversion Rate

The percentage of people who completed a desired action on a single web page, such as providing an email or filling out a form. The higher the conversion rate, the more successful the page will be both in terms of marketing and ranking.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

The process of improving your site conversion using design techniques, key optimization principles, and testing. It involves creating an experience for your website visitors that will convert them into customers. CRO is most often applied to web page or landing page optimization, but it can also be applied to social media, CTAs, and other parts of your marketing.

Core Update

When Google makes broad updates to its core algorithm. Google sometimes announces a specific theme to their updates, such as the Page Experience update, but core updates are non-specific and happen several times a year.

Core Web Vitals

A set of metrics that measure the performance of the page related to user experience. Core Web Vitals were introduced alongside the Page Experience update as the main signals that indicate a good user experience:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – loading performance.
• First Input Delay (FID) – interactivity.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – visual stability.

Correlation

The extent to which a relationship exists between two or more elements. Often used in SEO research to infer relationships of variables on search rankings due to the black box nature of algorithms. Always remember, however, that correlation ≠ causation.

Cost-per-Lead (CPL)

The amount it costs your marketing organization to acquire a lead. This factors heavily into CAC (customer acquisition cost), and is a metric marketers should keep a keen eye on.

Counter

The white space enclosed by a letterform, whether wholly enclosed, as in ‘d’ or ‘o’, or partially, as in ‘c’ or a double-story ‘a’.

Craigslist

Craigslist is a popular online commerce site in which users sell a variety of goods and services to other users. The service has been credited for causing the reduction of classified advertising in newspapers across the United States.

Crawl Budget

The total number of URLs search engines can and want to crawl on a website during a specific time period.

Crawl Error

URLs that a search engine bot is unable to crawl or return as a status code error

Crawler

A program search engines use to crawl the web. Bots visit webpages to collect information and add or update a search engine’s index. Also known as: Bot, Spider, Web Crawler

Crawling

The process of gathering information, using a crawler, from the billions of public webpages to update, add, and organize webpages in a search engine’s index.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. It provides free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof.

Creep

Definitely not what you are thinking—creep, alternatively known as shingling, is the inside margin of a book, magazine or other publication. With some bindings, the creep often has to be made larger so that no content is covered when it is being read. Printing companies will sometimes have charts to calculate the size of the creep for their different paper stocks.

Crop Marks

Also known as trim marks, crop marks are specific marks (they kind of look like two lines crossing with a target) that indicate to a printer where the paper should be trimmed. They’re essential when designing for print and make it much easier to communicate with the printers.

Crossbar

A stroke across a stem (as in the horizontal line of the letter ‘T’, ‘H’, ‘E’, etc.).

Crowdsourced Content

Creating your own content can take more time than you have to lend to it -- which is where crowdsourcing comes into play. Allowing subject matter experts, customers, or freelancers to create your content for you is a prime way to get more quality content published in less time. Compile the content you get back into a really awesome offer and give credit to all the contributors -- a win-win for everyone involved.

Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing, similar to outsourcing, refers to the act of soliciting ideas or content from a group of people, typically in an online setting.

CSS

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets, and it's what gives your entire website its style, like colors, fonts, and background images. It affects the mood and tone of a web page, making it an incredibly powerful tool. It's also what allows websites to adapt to different screen sizes and device types. If a web page was a person, CSS would be their wardrobe

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Your total Sales and Marketing cost. To calculate CAC, follow these steps for a given time period (month, quarter, or year):

1. Add up program or advertising spend + salaries + commissions + bonuses + overhead.
2. Divide by the number of new customers in that time period.

Customer Journey

All of the potential moments (or touchpoints) at which a prospect is exposed to or engages with a brand. All of these interactions are designed to eventually persuade, influence, and convert that prospect to become a customer, client, or subscriber. Though customer journeys can vary greatly by business type and industry, typically it is made up of four main “stages”:

1. Awareness

2. Consideration

3. Decision

4. Retention

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

A set of software programs that let companies keep track of everything they do with their existing and potential customers. At the simplest level, CRM software lets you keep track of all the contact information for these customers. But CRM systems can do lots of other things, too, like tracking email, phone calls, faxes, and deals; sending personalized emails; scheduling appointments; and logging every instance of customer service and support. Some systems also incorporate feeds from social media such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others.

Data

All the hard numbers that represent real customers – the who, what, where, when, why, and how – all of which is needed to make informed decisions about SEO strategies and tactics.

De-index

When Google removes a website or webpage, either temporarily or permanently, from search results, specifically its search index. Google provides a Remove URLs tool in the Search Console for voluntary cases; however, a website may also be de-indexed as punishment for violating Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, in the form of a manual action. Also known as: Delisting

Dead-End Page

A webpage that links to no other webpages. So called because once a user or bot arrives on this page, there is no place to move forward.

Deep Link

A link pointing to any webpage other than the homepage or content within a mobile app.

Deep Link Ratio

When an internal link points directly to a page other than the homepage on a site, this is known as a deep link. The ratio of deep links compared to links to your homepage is known as deep link ratio. It is considered that having links directly to deep pages in a site indicates quality of content on the site. The more deep links you have the better the site. There is no evidence to support that deep link ratio has any direct impact on ranking.

Delicious

Delicious is a free online bookmarking service that lets users save website addresses publicly and privately online so they can be accessed from any device connected to the internet and shared with friends.

Descenders

Descenders are the opposite of ascenders, they’re the tail of letters—the part of the letter that descends below the baseline. Generally, only the lowercase letters g, j, q, p and y are descenders. Though, in some fonts, the lowercase f, capital Q and J and certain numbers are also descenders. Both ascenders and descenders increase the recognisability of words to the extent that British road signs stopped using all capital letters and instead opted for their

Digg

Digg is a social news website that allows members to submit and vote for articles. Articles with the most votes appear on the homepage of the site and subsequently are seen by the largest portion of the site’s membership, as well as other visitors.

Direct Message (or DM) 

Direct messages -- also referred to as "DMs" -- are private conversations that occur on Twitter. Both parties must be following one another to send a message.

Direct Traffic

In Google Analytics, users that navigate directly to the site by typing the URL directly into the browser or by clicking on a bookmark are known as direct traffic. Google will also include into direct traffic any traffic sources it doesn’t recognize.

Directory

A list of websites, usually separated by related categories and maintained by human editors. Depending on the directory, inclusion could be free or paid. In the past, links from directories were highly sought after (e.g., DMOZ), leading to widespread abuse and overall devaluing of this sort of link building. Also known as: Web Directory, Link Directory

Disavow

If your link profile includes a high number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality inbound links that may be harming your rankings – and don’t have the ability to get them removed for a legitimate reason (e.g., the link exists on a site you have no control over) – you can use Google’s Disavow Tool tool to tell Google to ignore those links.

Discover (or Snapchat Discover)

Discover is a section of Snapchat's app dedicated to large brands, influencers, and longer form story content. 

Display

Display type is fonts that are designed to make an impact and catch the eye—they’re used for things that need to stand out: headlines, posters, billboards, logo. Famous examples of display type will often be seen across different mediums—Stencil, for instance, was used for the TV shows The A-Team, M

Disqus

Disqus is a comment system and moderation tool for your site. This service lets you add community management and social web integration to any site on any platform.

Do-follow

A link that doesn’t use the “nofollow” attribute. This allows Google to pass ranking signals through the link.

Domain

A website address – typically ending in an extension like .com, .org, or .net. For example: www.normalbear.com is the domain of this website.

Domain Age

The date a domain was registered on, to the current date is known as domain age. For example, Normal Bear was registered on 10th June 2003, so it has a significant domain age.

Domain Authority

The overall “strength” of a website, built up over time, which can help a new page rank well quickly, even before that content has earned links or engagement. A score, between 0-100, SEO software company Moz uses to predict the ability of a website to rank in search results.

Domain History

Any activity, including backlinks and website built on a domain previously is known as domain history. If a previous website on a domain received a penalty this will remain attached to the domain and cause issues for the new owner. It’s recommended to always check the domain history before you purchase a domain.

Doorway Page

Webpages that are created to rank in search engines for specific keywords only for the purpose of redirecting users who click on that page to a different website.

DuckDuckGo

A search engine that was founded September 28, 2008. It is often praised for its heavy focus on user privacy and a lack of filter bubbles (search personalization). DuckDuckGo relies on more than 400 sources to serve its search results, including vertical search engines, its own crawler, DuckDuckBot, Bing, and Yandex. In 2016, 4 billion searches were conducted on DuckDuckGo.

Duplicate Content

When a significant amount of content contained on one webpage matches, or is incredibly similar to, content that exists elsewhere on the same website or a completely different website.

Dwell Time

The amount of time that elapses between when a user clicks on a search result and then returns to the SERP from a website. Short dwell time (e.g., less than 5 seconds) can be an indicator of low-quality content to search engines.

Dynamic Content

A way to display different messaging on your website based on the information you already know about the visitor. For example, you could use Smart CTAs so that first-time visitors will see a personalized CTA (perhaps with a top-of-the-funnel offer) and those already in your database see a different CTA (maybe for content that offers a little more information about your product or service).

.edu Links

Educational-focused institutions have a top-level domain (TLD) of .edu. For example, stanford.edu. A link from such a site is known as a .edu link. Links from .edu sites were considered ‘hard to get’ and thought to have more value for link building. As a result, link builders targeted .edu links until many of the lesser-known .edu sites became devalued by Google and any benefit of the link was ignored.

E-A-T

Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness was a concept taken from the Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines and became known as E-A-T. E-A-T represents signals that Google uses to determine quality content but it is not a direct ranking factor. Google has committed to stopping the spread of disinformation, especially from any sites operating in Your Money Your Life (YMYL) niches such as finance or health.

E-commerce

The buying and selling of products online.

Ear

The stroke attached to the bowl of the lowercase g. Some typographers use the same term for the lowercase r.

Ebook

Ebooks are online-only books that are a common type of content that many marketers use, often to help generate leads. They are generally a more long-form content type than, say, blog posts, and go into in-depth detail on a subject.

Editorial Calendar

It's like a road map for content creation, showing you what kind of content to create, what topics to cover, which personas to target, and how often to publish to best support your strategy. Maintaining an editorial calendar will keep you more organized and show you any gaps you may have in your content library. It also helps ensure you're doing the right things for your personas and not going way off-track with the topics you're covering.

Editorial Link

A link that is given by one website to another without the recipient asking or paying for it. Also known as: Natural Link.

Ellipsis

Character composed of three dots…

Email

In its most basic sense, email stands for “Electronic Mail.” It’s a core component of marketing because it’s a direct connection to a contact’s inbox. However, with great power comes great responsibility, meaning it’s important for marketers to not abuse the email relationship with a contact. It’s far too easy for a contact to click “unsubscribe” after gaining their hard earned trust in your communication. Don’t blow it.

Embossing & Debossing

Embossing and its counterpart debossing are finishing processes that involve creating dimensional relief images in to a piece of paper or card. The practice uses a printing press to, in the case of embossing, lift the design into the material or, in the case of debossing, sunk the design into the material.

Emoji

Emojis are small cartoonish images that can be sent along with text in social media and private messages. 

Employee Advocacy

Employee advocacy refers to the act of employees using their own social presence to increase the reach of the company and its content. 

Endorsement

An endorsement on LinkedIn refers to an instance in which another LinkedIn user recognizes you for one of the skills you have listed on your profile. 

Engagement Metrics

Methods to measure how users are interact with webpages and content. Examples of engagement metrics include: click-through rate, conversion rate, bounce rate, time on page/site, new vs. returning visitors, frequency and recency, and dwell time

Engagement Rate

A popular social media metric used to describe the amount of interaction -- Likes, shares, comments -- a piece of content receives. Interactions like these tell you that your messages are resonating with your fans and followers.

Entities

Corporations, organizations, websites, or groups that have an identity seperate from its members.

Eventbrite

Eventbrite is a provider of online event management and ticketing services. Eventbrite is free if your event is free. If you sell tickets to your event, Eventbrite collects a fee per ticket.

Evergreen Content

Evergreen content is content that continues to provide value to readers no matter when they stumble upon it. In other words, it can be referenced long after it was originally published, and even then, it's still valuable to the reader. This post on how to write blog posts serves as a prime example. Typically, a piece of evergreen content is timeless, valuable, high quality, and canonical or definitive. These posts are typically a content marketer's best friend because of the tremendous SEO value they provide.

Extended

Character with an exaggerated width a character such as an accent mark.

External Link

See: Outbound Link

Facebook

Facebook is a social network you're likely quite familiar with already -- but it has become so much more than just a platform to publish content and gain followers. You can now utilize the awesome targeting options available through Facebook advertising to find and attract brand new contacts to your website and get them to convert on your landing pages ... but remember, you still need awesome content to do it. While it’s a core component of any marketing strategy, it shouldn’t be the only component. Focusing entirely on Facebook (or any other large social channel, for that matter) will only give you a small piece of the inbound marketing pie. And it’s still piping hot, so be careful.

Fans

Fans is the term used to describe people who like your Facebook Page.

Favorite

Represented by the small star icon on Twitter, favoriting a tweet signals to the creator that you liked their content or post. 

Featured Snippet

For certain queries, usually questions (i.e., who/what/where/when/why/how), Google sometimes shows a special block above the organic search results. This box contains a summary (in the form of paragraph, list, table, or video), as well as the publication date, page title, link to the webpage from which the answer originated, and URL. Also known as: Position Zero.

Findability

How easily the content on a website can be discovered, both internally (by users) and externally (by search engines).

Finsta

Short for "fake insta" this term describes one's secret or fake Instagram page that's hidden from their employers. 

First Link Priority

A concept in internal linking is that Google treats links differently if there are two links on a web page pointing to the same page. It was thought Google would consider the anchor text from the first link to have more influence. There is no definitive evidence for how Google treats the same link on a page. When adding links to a page, it’s recommended to do this on a user-first basis and apply the link to anchor text where it is relevant.

Flash Mob

A flash mob is a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and pointless act for a brief time, then quickly disperse. The term flash mob is generally applied only to gatherings organized via telecommunications, social media, or viral emails.

Flickr

Flickr is a social network for online picture sharing. The service allows users to store photos online and then share them with others through profiles, groups, sets, and other methods.

Foiling

A process also known as foil stamping, foiling is a type of printing where metallic or pigmented foil is applied to a surface through the application of heat and a die. A relatively uncomplicated process, foiling can add extra dimensions to a design especially packaging—they’re excellent for catching a potential customers’ eye on shop shelves.

Follow Friday (#ff)

Follow Friday is a trend via the hashtag #ff every Friday on Twitter. Users select other usernames and tweet them with #ff in their post, meaning they recommend following those Twitter users. There is debate whether this trend is past its prime.

Follower

In a social media setting, a follower refers to a person who subscribes to your account in order to receive your updates. 

Font Color

Refers to the color of text that shows up on a web page

Font Size

The height of a typeface. It is usually measured in points (8, 10, 12, etc.), from baseline to baseline.

Font Weight

Font weight refers quite literally to the thickness of a font, in terms of both an individual font and different styles of a font—black, bold, light etc. Font weight ranges from 100 to 900 with “normal” font being 400 so 100 being extra light or equivalent and 900 being extra black or equivalent. Though, you’ll rarely need to use the numbers as Adobe Creative Cloud and similar programs give the font weight as their names.

Footer Link

Links that appear in the bottom section (or “footer) of a website. See: Website Navigation

Form

The place your page visitors will supply information in exchange for your offer. It’s also how those visitors can convert into precious sales leads. As a best practice, only ask for information you need from your leads in order to effectively follow up with and/or qualify them.

Forums

Also known as a message board, a forum is an online discussion site. It originated as the modern equivalent of a traditional bulletin board, and a technological evolution of the dial-up bulletin board system.

Freshness

Freshness refers to the age of content published online. It is considered that Google gives priority to fresh content in some niches for some queries depending on certain factors. For example, searches related to COVID announcements or sports results. Query Deserves Freshness (QDF) is part of the Google algorithm that determines when a query should show up-to-date information, especially in breaking news, recurring events, information queries, and product queries.

Friction

Any element of your website that is confusing, distracting, or causes stress for visitors, causing them to leave your page. Examples of friction-causing elements include dissonant colors, too much text, distracting website navigation menus, or landing page forms with too many fields.

Friends

Friends is the term used on Facebook to represent the connections you make and the people you follow. These are individuals you consider to be friendly enough with you to see your Facebook profile and engage with you.

.gov Links

Government organizations have a top-level domain (TLD) of .gov. For example, usa.gov. A link from such a site is known as a .gov link. Only government entities in the US can apply and gain a .gov TLD. Other countries have their own country-specific version, such as .gov.uk. Government TLD domains are tightly regulated and trusted sources of information. For this reason, a link from a .gov domain is considered to have significant value and has been targeted by link spam.

GaggleAMP

GaggleAMP is a social media marketing platform that provides businesses with the ability to leverage its employee's online presence to increase brand awareness and expand its reach.

Geotag 

geotag is the directional coordinates that can be attached to a piece of content online. For example, Instagram users often use geotagging to highlight the location in which their photo was taken. 

GIF

GIF is an acronym for Graphics Interchange Format. In social media, GIFs serve as small-scale animations and film clips. (Check out this round up of reaction GIFs used to illustrate our excitement when Facebook announced that they were supporting their functionality.)

Golden Ratio

First studied by the Ancient Greeks in the 5th Century B, the Golden Ratio is when you take two objects, divide the larger by smaller and get the result of 1.6180 (or near it). We could get way more mathematical than that but we’ll just confuse ourselves. The most famous example of the golden ratio is the golden rectangle—this can be split into a perfect square and a rectangle of the same aspect ratio. The golden ratio can be used to make designs well formatted and attractive.

Google

The search engine founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in September 1998. Google marked a radical departure from human-edited web directories, relying on web crawling technology and a complex algorithm to analyze hyperlinking patterns to rank websites. Google is the most-used search engine in nearly every country in the world.

Google Analytics

A free web analytics program that can be used to track audience behavior, traffic acquisition sources, content performance, and much more.

Google Bomb

A practice intended to make a website rank number one for a surprising or controversial search phrase. This was accomplished by having a large number of websites link to a certain webpage with specific anchor text to help it rank for that term.

Google Chrome

Google Chrome is a free web browser produced by Google that fully integrates with its online search system as well as its other applications.

Google Dance

A term used starting in 2002 for the volatile period of time during which Google updated its search index, roughly every month.

Google Documents

Google Documents is a group of web-based office applications that includes tools for word processing, presentations, spreadsheet analysis, etc. All documents are stored and edited online and allow multiple people to collaborate on a document in real-time.

Google Hummingbird

A Google search algorithm that was officially announced in September 2013 after it had been in use for a month. The purpose of Hummingbird was to better understand the full context of queries (i.e., semantic search), rather than certain keywords, in order to provide better results.

Google Panda Algorithm

A major Google algorithm update that initially rolled out in February 2011, it was followed by numerous subsequent updates. The goal of Google Panda was to reduce the visibility of low-value content, often produced by “content farms. In 2016, Panda became part of Google’s core ranking algorithm.

Google Penguin Algorithm

A major Google algorithm that launched in April 2012, it was followed by a series of updates and refreshes. The goal of Penguin was to reduce the visibility of overly-optimized sites, or sites that excessively abused certain spammy tactics (e.g., building low-quality links, keyword stuffing). In 2016, Penguin started running in real-time as a part of Google’s core algorithm.

Google Pigeon Update

The name (given by the SEO industry, not Google) of a significant Google local search update launched July 24, 2014. The goal of Pigeon was to improve the accuracy and relevance of local searches by leveraging more traditional Google ranking signals and improving distance and locating ranking parameters.

Google RankBrain

A major Google algorithm change officially introduced in October 2015, although it had been in testing for months before this. With RankBrain, Google added machine learning to its algorithm and has been called the third most important ranking signal. In June 2016, it was revealed that RankBrain has been involved in every query and has an impact on rankings.

Google Sandbox

A theorized and debated (but never confirmed by Google) “waiting period” that prevents new websites from seeing the full benefit of their optimization efforts. Typically, this effect is witnessed most often with new sites targeting competitive keywords and can only be overcome when the site gains enough authority.

Google Search Console

Google’s Search Console offers several helpful features, including the ability to monitor sites for indexing errors and site speed. These pages are also used to communicate manual action notifications.

Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines

Google uses a document of guidelines for its internal Quality Raters to reference when manually reviewing websites. The original internal document was confidential and then Google publicly released the Search Quality Rater Guidelines online which is updated from time to time. Information in the document is a guide to creating quality content and features the concept of E-A-T. The guidelines are not a list of any direct ranking factors.

Google Trends

A website where you can explore data visualizations on the latest search trends, stories, and topics.

Google Webmaster Guidelines

Google’s guidance on good website optimization practices, as well as “illicit” practices that can result in manual action. Simply: Make unique, valuable, and engaging websites and webpages for users, not search engines, Avoid tricks and techniques that deceive users and are intended only to improve search rankings.

Google+

Google+ (referred to as "Google Plus") is a social network that allows you to join and create circles in which you can mix and match family members, friends, colleagues, and fellow industry members. While you can use it much like other social networks -- to publish and share content, and generate new leads -- it also provides content marketers with tremendous SEO value due to the rising importance of social sharing in search engine algorithms. (It is owned by Google, after all.)

Googlebot

The web crawling system Google uses to find and add new websites and webpages to its index.

Gradient

Sometimes specifically called a color gradient, gradients are a gradual change of color or shade—for instance a red slowly fading into an orange—or a color gradually fading into transparency. There are two types of gradients, axial/linear or radial, and both show the range of different shades and hues.

Gray Hat

A supposed “gray” area between techniques that adhere to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, but then add an element that bends the rules a little.

Grayscale

Grayscale is a color palette that only uses black, white and different shades of gray. The most obvious examples of grayscale are black and white films or photographs (which seeing as they contain grays, strictly aren’t black and white). Grayscale can also be used in design for many different reasons—from evoking nostalgia to helping you to learn how to

Grid

We can’t stress enough how important grids are to designers! Grids are an underlying system of horizontal and vertical columns and guides used to provide structure, consistency, accuracy in any design. They also make a designer’s life a whole lot easier.

Groups

Facebook and LinkedIn offer a Groups feature where people in similar industries or with similar passions can join a group and discuss topics related to it. 

Guest Blogging

A popular link building tactic that involves developing content for other websites in exchange for a backlink pointing at your own pages. Also known as: Guest Posting.

.htaccess File

A server configuration file that can be used to rewrite and redirect URLs.

Hand-lettering

Creating custom letters from scratch for a specific purpose/client.

Handle

Handle is the term used to describe someone's @username on Twitter. For example, HubSpot's Twitter handle is @HubSpot. 

Hangout

A Hangout is a video service on Google+ that allows you to video chat with up to 10 Google+ users are a time. You can name these chats, watch YouTube videos during them, open a Google Doc with colleagues, and much more.

Hard Return / Soft Return

Both of these terms refer to hitting the ‘return’ key and moving to a new line of text. They differ in that a hard return creates a whole new paragraph, whilst a soft return drops the text down remaining in the same paragraph.

Hashtag

Hashtags are a way for you and your readers to interact with each other on social media and have conversations about a particular piece of content. They tie public conversations on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram together into a single stream, which users can find by searching for a hashtag, clicking on one, or using a third-party monitoring tool like HubSpot's Social Inbox. The hashtags themselves are simply a keyword phrase, spelled out without spaces, with a pound sign (#) in front of it -- like #InboundChat and #ChocolateLovers. You can put these hashtags anywhere in your social media posts.

Head Term

A popular keyword with high search volume that is usually difficult to rank for. Also known as: Head Keyword, Short-Tail

Header image

A header image refers to the large photo displayed at the top of your profile on Twitter. The header image is also commonly referred to as the banner image on LinkedIn or the cover image on Facebook. 

Heading

HTML heading tags (H1-H6) separate content into sections, based on importance, with H1 being the most important and H6 being the least important. Headline tags should be used naturally and should incorporate your target keywords where relevant, as doing so may provide a small SEO benefit.

Headline

Text at the top of the page closed in an H1 tag that gives on overview of what the page is about.

Hex

Though designers will usually find their colors using the aforementioned RGB or CMYK, hex is still an important term to know. Hex is a six digit code used to represent a color. For example, The Simpsons’ yellow has the hex code FCD901. Hex codes are found alongside RGB and CMYK in a lot of design applications, but are most often used in HTML and CSS.

Hidden Text

Any text that can’t be seen by a user that is intended to manipulate search rankings by loading webpages with content-rich keywords and copy. This technique is against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can result in a manual action. For example, adding text that is: too small to read, the same color as the background, or sing CSS to push the text off-screen.

Hierarchy

One of the five basic principles of typography design, hierarchy creates organisation and direction in a design—it helps to give order to the text elements. Though it may not be immediately obvious to someone not in the know, you’ll definitely have seen hierarchy in action in pretty much anything you have read. It makes text more understandable and easier to read.

Hilltop Algorithm

Influenced by the HITS Algorithm, and added to Google’s algorithm in 2003, Hilltop assigned “expert” status to certain websites or webpages published about a specific topic that also link to unaffiliated pages about that topic.

HITS Algorithm

Hyperlink-Induced Topic Search is a link analysis algorithm that assesses a value not just based on content and inbound links (authorities), but also its outbound links (hubs).

Homepage

The default, or introductory webpage, of a website.

Hook

Curved arch (such as on the letter ‘f’).

Houseparty

Houseparty is an app that Gen Z has notably used to connect with friends over video calls. 

HTML

Stands for Hypertext Markup Language. This language when written serves as the structure of a website. If a web page was a person, HTML would be the bones

HTTP

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol is how data is transferred from a computer server to a web browser.

HTTPS

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure uses a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to encrypt data transferred between a website and web browser. HTTPS is a minor Google ranking factor.

Hub Page

An authoritative central resource (e.g., page or article), dedicated to a specific topic (keyword), that is continually updated and linked to, and also links out to topically-relevant webpages.

Icon

Icons are something we all see practically every day—they’re images used to represent objects or actions. One of the most common examples of an icon is a magnifying glass used to signify a search, which is used on Google and countless other websites. Though, icons are used across a wide spectrum of industries—from supermarkets to the Olympics. Just make sure they’re clear and not going to cause any confusion!

IGTV

IGTV is where verified businesses and accounts can host long-form videos or place longer live streams after they've aired.

Impressions

An impression refers to a way in which marketers and advertisers keep track of every time ad is "fetched" and counted. 

Inbound Link

See: Backlink

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing refers to marketing activities that draw visitors in, rather than marketers having to go out to get prospects' attention. It's all about earning the attention of customers, making the company easy to find online, and drawing customers to the website by producing interesting, helpful content. By aligning the content you publish with your customer’s interests, you naturally attract inbound traffic that you can then convert, close, and delight over time.

Index

The database search engines use to store and retrieve information gathered during the crawling process.

Indexability

How easily a search engine bot can understand and add a webpage to its index.

Indexed Page

A webpage that has been discovered by a crawler, has been added to a search engine index, and is eligible to appear in search results for relevant queries.

Infographic

A highly visual piece of content that is very popular among digital marketers as a way of relaying complex concepts in a simple and visual way.

Information Architecture

How a website is organized and where various content and navigational elements are located on webpages.

Information Retrieval

The process of searching for information (e.g., text, images, video) from a large database and then presenting the most relevant information to an end user.

Insights

Many social media networks, like Facebook or Instagram, offer insights pages to their business account holders. These pages often allow the user's to see valuable analytics about their page and how they're performing compared to similar pages. 

Instagram

Instagram is a photo sharing application that lets users take photos, apply filters to their images, and share the photos instantly on the Instagram network and other social networks like Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and Foursquare. The app is targeted toward mobile social sharing, and has gained more than 300 million users. 

Instagram Live

Instagram Live is the platform where individuals and businesses on Instagram can share a live feed of what's going on in their lives. 

Instant Messaging

Instant messaging (IM) is a form of real-time, direct text-based communication between two or more people. More advanced instant messaging software clients also allow enhanced modes of communication, such as live voice or video calling.

Internal Link

See: Website Navigation

IP Address

An Internet Protocol Address. IP addresses can be:

Shared: Numerous websites share an address within one server or a group of servers (a.k.a., virtual hosting)

Dedicated: A website has its own address. Neither will help you rank better; however, a dedicated IP address can increase site speed.

Italics

Forward-slanting characters, developed in early 1500s.

JavaScript (JS)

A programming language that makes it possible to dynamically insert content, links, meta data, or other elements, on websites. JavaScript can potentially make it difficult for search engine bots to crawl and index webpages and increase the time it takes for webpage to load for users. If a web page was a person, JS would be the brain

Joint

A stroke that connects with a stem.

Justified

Instances when text is aligned to the left and right margin within a text frame, with no rag on either side.

Kerning

Kern is the space between two specific letters or characters, and the process of adjusting the space between letters or characters. Kerning can increase the legibility of a word or a entire block of text. It helps to create proportional and balanced typography and, in turn, better looking typography.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

A type of performance measurement companies use to evaluate an employee's or an activity's success. Marketers look at KPIs to track progress toward marketing goals, and successful marketers constantly evaluate their performance against industry standard metrics. Examples of KPIs include CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost), blog traffic sources, and homepage views. Choose KPIs that represent how your marketing and business are performing.

Keyword

The word, words, or phrase that an SEO professional or marketer targets for the purpose of matching and ranking for what users are searching for. The words used on webpages can help search engines determine which pages are the most relevant to show in organic results when a searcher enters a query. Keywords usually represent topics, ideas, or questions. Also known as: Keyphrase.

Keyword Cannibalization

A type of self-competition that occurs when multiple pages from one website rank for the same query on a SERP. This can result in a lower CTR, diminished authority, and lower conversion rates than from having one consolidated webpage that ranks well.

Keyword Density

How often a word or phrase appears within the content of a webpage. At best, this unproven concept is outdated, if ever really mattered to search engines. There is no ideal percentage that will help a webpage rank better.

Keyword Prominence

When a keyword is placed as high as possible on a web page to influence ranking for a search term. Using a keyword inserted at the beginning of a page, for example in the first paragraph, does send a strong signal to Google about the page. Keyword prominence does work as a ranking signal if the theme of the page is aligned with the keyword.

Keyword Research

The process of discovering any relevant topics, subjects, and terms searchers enter into search engines, as well as the volume and competition level of those terms. This practice is made possible by a variety of free and paid tools.

Keyword Stemming

In language and grammar, words are constructed around a variation upon a root or stem. For example, shopping, shopped, shops are all variations of the stem ‘shop’. When trying to rank for a term such as ‘shop’, using variations of the word on the page (shopping, shopped) will all be considered the same stem keyword by Google. This also applies to plurals such as bikes/bikes or fly/flies. Keyword stemming is Google’s ability to understand the variations of a keyword and is part of its algorithm.

Keyword Stuffing

Adding irrelevant keywords, or repeating keywords beyond what is natural, to a webpage in the hopes of increasing search rankings. This spam tactic is against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can result in a manual action.

Kik

Kik is a social media network where people can send short video messages to each other via the Kik mobile app. 

Klout

Klout is a measure of social influence. The service allows users to connect various social accounts such as Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc., and then provides every user with his or her Klout score. The score is out of 100 -- the higher the score, the more influence it estimates you have in the social world.

Knowledge Graph

An entity database Google uses to surface facts and information on people, places, and things (a.k.a., entities) – and their connections – in a Knowledge Panel or carousel at the top of search results on relevant queries.

Knowledge Panel

A box that appears at the top of, or on the right rail (desktop only), of Page 1 of Google’s search results for relevant queries. This panel contains facts and information on people, places, and things, as well as links to related websites or Google searches.

KPI

Stands for key performance indicator. A measurement method businesses use to gauge whether marketing and business objectives, targets, and goals are being reached.

Landing Page

A landing page is a website page containing a form that is used for lead generation. This page revolves around a marketing offer, such as an ebook or a webinar, and serves to capture visitor information in exchange for the valuable offer. Landing pages are the gatekeepers of the conversion path and are what separates a website visitor from becoming a lead. A smart inbound marketer will create landing pages that appeal to different personae (plural for persona) at various stages of the buying process. A hefty endeavor no doubt, but one that pays off in spades.

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)

An information retrieval method designed to help search engines identify the correct context of a word. LSI doesn’t play a useful role in SEO today.

Lead

Any person or business that has elevated potential of being converted to a consumer/client/etc. In business, a lead generally refers to an interested person who provided their contact information to a company.

Lead Nurturing

Sometimes referred to as “drip marketing,” lead nurturing is the practice of developing a series of communications (emails, social media messages, etc.) that seek to qualify a lead, keep it engaged, and gradually push it down the sales funnel. Inbound marketing is all about delivering valuable content to the right audience -- and lead nurturing helps foster this by providing contextually relevant information to a lead during different stages of the buying lifecycle.

Leading

Pronounced ‘ledding’, leading is graphic design jargon for ‘line-spacing’. It refers to the space between two baselines of text. The larger the leading, the more space between the text giving it more room to breathe and, generally, making it look nicer. Bonus fact: the term originates from the strips of lead in typewriters which were used to spread the lines out evenly.

Left-aligned

Text that is aligned with the left margin.

Leg

Short stroke in a downward direction.

Letterpress

Letterpress is a distinctive printing process that dates back back over 500 years, but the origins of which date back at least 1000 years. It a kind of relief printing in which a press is used to apply the direct impression of a raised surface, in this case letters, which has been covered in ink against paper. It has seen a resurgence in popularity as a craft recently after a decline following the introduction of computers in the 1970s.

Lifecycle Stages

These divisions serve as a way to describe the relationship you have with your audience, and can generally be broken down into three stages: awareness, evaluation, and purchase. What's important to understand about each of these stages is that not every piece of content you create is appropriate, depending on what stage your audience might fall in at that moment. That's why dynamic content is so great -- you can serve up content that's appropriate for whatever stage that particular visitor is in.

Lifetime Value (LTV)

A prediction of the net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a customer. To calculate LTV, follow these steps for a given time period:

1. Take the revenue the customer paid you in that time period.
2. Subtract from that number the gross margin.
3. Divide by the estimated churn rate (aka cancellation rate) for that customer.

Ligature

A ligature occurs where two or more letters are joined together as one character.

Like

A Like is an action that can be made by a Facebook or Instagram user. Instead of writing a comment or sharing a post, a user can click the Like button as a quick way to show approval.

Link

SEO: A connection between two websites built using HTML code. A link enables users to navigate to websites, social networks, and apps. Links play a critical role in how search engines evaluate and rank websites. Graphic Design: The stroke connecting the bowl and the loop of the lowercase g.

Link Bait

Intentionally provocative content that is meant to grab people’s attention and attract links from other websites.

Link Building

A process designed to get other trusted and relevant websites to link to your website to help improve your organic search rank and visibility. Link building can be done by:

• Conducting outreach to media outlets, bloggers, influencers, and webmasters.
• Attracting editorial links naturally, by publishing various types of high-quality or sensational content.
• Paying for them. For example, you can obtain links via sponsored content, paid reviews, or paying for a specific type of link to appear on another website.
• Forging partnerships.
• Manually. For instance, you link together various properties you manage or own, or add your site to online directories or review sites.

Link Equity

The value of inbound links, in terms of relevance, authority, and trust.

Link Farm

When a group of websites link to each other, usually using automated programs, in the hopes of artificially increasing search rankings. A spam tactic. Also known as: Link Network, Blog Network, Private Blog Network

Link Juice

Slang term to describe the ranking power that is being transferred to a page via links

Link Profile

Every type of link that points to a particular website. The quality of a website’s link profile can vary widely, depending on how they were acquired and the anchor text used.

Link Stability

Where a link remains on a page consistently for a period of time without being changed or updated. Google did apply for a patent that referred to link churn and how often the links on a page were changed, but there is no evidence that link stability has any influence on ranking.

Link Velocity

How quickly (or slowly) a website accumulates links. A sudden increase in link velocity could potentially be a sign of spamming, or could be due to viral marketing or doing something newsworthy (either intentionally or unintentionally).

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site. Launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. Nowadays, with more than 414 million registered members, LinkedIn is the most popular social network for professionals and one of the top social networks overall. Getting on the platform, developing a completed profile, and networking has helped many a jobseeker find work.

LinkedIn Publishing

LinkedIn's publishing platform functions as a place where members can publish long-form posts that related to their professional interests and expertise. While this capability used to be limited to LinnkedIn Influencers only, the platform was opened up to everyone in 2014.

LinkedIn SlideShare

LinkedIn SlideShare is an online social network for sharing presentations and documents. Users can favorite and embed presentations as well as share them on other social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

Links, Internal

Links that navigate from one page to another page on the same domain. Internal links can be inserted on a page, in the main navigation menu, or in the sitemap. Internal links can be used to indicate the importance of a page on a site. For example, a page that is directly linked from the home page compared to a page that is four clicks from the homepage. Internal links are important because Googlebot crawlers follow internal links to navigate your site and find new pages.

Links, NoFollow

In a hyperlink, rel=”nofollow” is an attribute added to the link to show that you are not passing any credit or endorsement to the page you are linking to Nofollow was originally introduced by Google to limit comment spam and devalued all nofollow links, but they have since changed how the directive works. Nofollow is now considered a ‘hint’ which means they may still use some information about linking patterns, but generally, still accept that no weight should be passed through the link.

Links, Outbound or External

An external or outbound link is a link from a page on x domain page to a page on y domain. For example, a link from normalbear.com/google to google.com/about-us It was considered that external links to authority sites added value to a page because it demonstrates that the page is well-researched and is using trusted sources. External links are not considered to have any influence on ranking and should only be used to cite sources where relevant.

Listed

The act of being "listed" on Twitter refers to when a user curates a custom list of Twitter users to more easily keep tabs on their tweets. 

Live streaming

Live streaming is the act of delivering content over the internet in real-time. This term was popularized in social media by apps such as Meerkat and Periscope. 

Log File

A file that records users’ information, such as IP addresses, type of browser, Internet Service Provider (ISP), date/time stamp, referring/exit pages, and number of clicks.

Log File Analysis

The process of exploring the data contained in a log file to identify trends, administer the site, track user’s movement around the site, gather demographic information, and understand how search bots are crawling the website.

Logomark

A logo of a company that does not contain the brand name itself—usually a shape or character used to visually represent the company. Logomarks are more easily shown than described, so think of Twitter’s bird (which in case you didn’t know is called Larry after basketball legend Larry Bird) or Apple’s iconic apple with a bite.

Logotype

Also known as a wordmark, a logotype is a brand name styled as a logo—designed in a visually unique way for a company. They’re usually very obvious and quickly associate a business with its visual identity. Some famous and recognisable examples include Disney, Coca Cola and Google.

Long-Tail Keyword

A long-tail keyword is a very targeted search phrase that contains three or more words. It often contains a head term, which is a more generic search term, plus one or two additional words that refine the search term. For example:

• Head term: unicorn
• Long-tail keywords: unicorn games online, unicorn costumes for kids, unicorn videos on YouTube

Lowercase

Lowercase characters are the non-capital letters of the alphabet. They make up the bulk of written text, with uppercase or capital letters used primarily only to start sentences or proper names. The term lowercase is derived from the days of metal type where the more frequently used letters were kept near at hand in the lower case while the less frequently used capital letters were kept in the harder to reach upper case.

LTV:CAC

The ratio of lifetime value (LTV) to customer acquisition cost (CAC). Once you have the LTV and the CAC, compute the ratio of the two. If it costs you $100,000 to acquire a customer with an LTV of $437,500, then your LTV:CAC is 4.4 to 1.

Lurker

A lurker online is a person who reads discussions on a message board, newsgroup, social network, or other interactive system, but rarely or never participates in the discussion.

Machine Learning

A subset of Artificial Intelligence in which a system uses data to learn and adjust a complex process without human intervention.

Manual Action

Google’s term for a penalty. Google will take manual action on a website after a human reviewer (i.e., a Google employee) manually reviews a website to confirm whether it has failed to comply with Google’s Webmaster guidelines. Penalized websites can either be demoted or removed entirely from search results. Manual actions can be assessed to the entire website or just certain webpages.

Margin

The margin is the blank space between the edge of a page and the content within it. The margin ensures that everything, but especially text and body copy, sits properly and comfortably in the document. The width of a margin can really affect the overall feel and look of a design.

Marketing Automation

While there’s some overlap with the term “lead nurturing,” marketing automation is a bit different. Think of marketing automation as the platform with associated tools and analytics to develop a lead nurturing strategy. If you’ll let me run with an “art” analogy, marketing automation is the paintbrush, watercolors, and blank canvas. Lead nurturing is the artist that makes it all come together. Like Bob Ross! You can’t paint a happy little nurturing campaign without both.

Bonus: Want to get super-savvy with your marketing automation terminology? Take it to the next level with behavior-based marketing automation. Behavior-based marketing automation refers to a system that triggers emails and other communication based on user activity on and off your site. It enables marketers to nurture leads and send them information only when it is most relevant to their stage in the buying cycle.

Mashup

A content mashup contains multiple types of media drawn from pre-existing sources to create a new work. Digital mashups allow individuals or businesses to create new pieces of content by combining multiple online content sources.

Masthead

Though it sounds like it should be something to do with a ship, the masthead is simply the title design for the name of a publication, usually found on the front cover of a magazine. Masthead can also refer to graphic image or text title at the top of a webpage.

Meme

A meme on the internet is used to describe a thought, idea, joke, or concept that's widely shared online. It is typically an image with text above and below it, but can also come in video and link form. A popular example is the "I Can Has Cheezburger?" cat meme that turned into an entire site of memes.

Mention

A mention is a Twitter term used to describe an instance in which a user includes someone else's @username in their tweet to attribute a piece of content or start a discussion. 

Meta Description

A tag that can be added to the “head section of an HTML document. It acts as a description of a webpage’s content. This content isn’t used in ranking algorithms, but is often displayed as the “snippet that appears in the search results. Accurate and engaging descriptions can increase organic click-through rate.

Meta Keywords

A tag that can be added to the “head section of an HTML document. Adding a bunch of keywords here won’t help you rank – search engine algorithms have ignored this tag for ranking purposes for years due to abuse (in the form of keyword stuffing).

Meta Tags

Information that appears in the HTML source code of a webpage to describe its contents to search engines. The title tag and meta description are the most commonly used types of meta tags in SEO.

Metric

A way to measure activity and performance in order to assess the success (or lack thereof) of an SEO initiative.

Microsite

A cross between a landing page and a “regular” website. ElfYourself.com is a great example. Microsites are used when marketers want to create a different online experience for their audience separate from their main website. These sites often have their own domain names and distinct visual branding.

Middle of the Funnel

This refers to the stage that a lead enters after identifying a problem. Now they’re looking to conduct further research to find a solution to the problem. Typical middle of the funnel offers include case studies or product brochures -- essentially anything that brings your business into the equation as a solution to the problem the lead is looking to solve. Also, if you want to be cool, you can refer to this stage as “MOFU” for short.

Mobile Marketing

With mobile search queries officially surpassing desktop queries, now is probably the time to explore mobile marketing. What is it? Well, mobile marketing refers to the practice of optimizing marketing for mobile devices to provide visitors with time- and location- sensitive, personalized information for promoting goods, services, and ideas.

Mobile Optimization

Mobile optimization means designing and formatting your website so that it’s easy to read and navigate from a mobile device. This can be done by either creating a separate mobile website or incorporating responsive design in initial site layout. Google's algorithm now rewards mobile-friendly websites, so if your site isn't fully optimized for mobile devices, you will likely see a hit to your ranking on mobile searches.

Mock-up

A mock-up is a realistic, normally 3D representation of a design, used to demonstrate how a design will look in the real world. There’s mock-ups for everything from tote bags to iPads so they can be used to show how an entire campaign or brand roll-out would look. Check out our list of

Monochrome

Monochrome is a color palette made up of various different shades and tones of a single color. It’s important to note that while grayscale is monochrome, monochrome is not necessarily grayscale—monochrome images can be made up of any color, for example an image made up of different shades and tones of purple.

Monospaced

A monospaced typeface is a typeface where each character is the same width, all occupying the same amount of horizontal space. They can also be called fixed-pitch, fixed-width or non-proportional typefaces.

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)

The amount of revenue a subscription-based business receives per month. Includes MRR gained by new accounts (net new), MRR gained from upsells (net positive), MRR lost from downsells (net negative), and MRR lost from cancellations (net loss).

Moodboard

The starting point for a lot of designers, a moodboard is a way for designers to collect together lots of visual references for a new design project—these can be photos, images or typography. Moodboards are used to develop the project’s aesthetic, for inspiration or to help communicate a specific idea or concept.

“(not provided)”

After search engines moved to secure search in 2011, keyword data was removed from Google Analytics, replaced with “(not provided)” – thus making it impossible to know which queries were responsible for visitors finding a website.

Native Advertising 

Native content refers to a type of online advertising in which the ad copy and format adheres to the format of a regular post on the network it's being published on. The purpose is to make ads feel less like ads, and more like part of the conversation.

Natural Link

See: Editorial Link

Negative SEO

A rare but malicious practice where webspam techniques are used to harm the search rankings of another website, usually a competitor.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

A customer satisfaction metric that measures, on a scale of 0-10, the degree to which people would recommend your company to others. The NPS is derived from a simple survey designed to help you determine how loyal your customers are to your business. To calculate NPS, subtract the percentage of customers who would not recommend you (detractors, or 0-6) from the percent of customers who would (promoters, or 9-10). Regularly determining your company’s NPS allows you to identify ways to improve your products and services so you can increase the loyalty of your customers.

News Feed

A news feed is an online feed full of news sources. On Facebook, the News Feed is the homepage of users' accounts where they can see all the latest updates from their friends. The news feed on Twitter is called Timeline.

Newsjacking

Newsjacking refers to the practice of capitalizing on the popularity of a news story to amplify your sales and marketing success. 

Niche

A specific market or area of interest consisting of a small group of highly-passionate people.

No-Follow Link

A no-follow link is used when a website does not want to pass search engine authority to another webpage. It tells search engine crawlers not to follow or pass credit to linked websites as a way to avoid association with spammy content or inadvertently violating webmaster guidelines. To varying degrees, the no-follow attribute is recognized by all major search engines, like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Not all links (and linking domains) are created equal, and a no-follow attribute helps avoid any foul play.

Noarchive Tag

A meta tag that tells search engines not to store a cached copy of your page.

Nofollow Attribute

A meta tag that tells search engines not to follow one specific outbound link. This is done in cases when a website doesn’t want to pass authority to another webpage or because it’s a paid link. The nofollow attribute looks like this: Anchor text goes here

Noindex Tag

A meta tag that tells search engines not to index a specific webpage in its index.

Nosnippet Tag

A meta tag that tells search engines not to show a description with your listing.

Off-Page Optimization

This is the free-spirited cousin of on-page optimization. Off-page SEO refers to incoming links and other outside factors that impact how a webpage is indexed in search results. Factors like linking domains and even social media play a role in off-page optimization. The good news is that it’s powerful; the not so good news is that it’s mostly out of an inbound marketer’s control. The solution? Create useful, remarkable content and chances are people will share and link to it.

Off-Page SEO

Demand generation and brand awareness activities that take place outside of a website. In addition to link building, promotion tactics can include social media marketing, content marketing, email marketing, influencer marketing, and even offline marketing channels (e.g., TV, radio, billboards).

Offer

Offers are content assets that live behind a form on a landing page. Their primary purpose is to help marketers generate leads for your business. There are many different types of offers you could create, including ebooks, checklists, cheat sheets, webinars, demos, templates, and tools.

On-Page Optimization

This type of SEO is based solely on a webpage and the various elements within the HTML. Ensuring that key pieces of the specific page (content, title tag, URL, and image tags) include the desired keyword will help a page rank for that particular phrase.

On-Page SEO

These activities all take place within a website. In addition to publishing relevant, high-quality content, on-page SEO includes optimizing HTML code (e.g., title tags, meta tags), information architecture, website navigation, and URL structure.

Organic Search

The natural, or unpaid, listings that appear on a SERP. Organic search results, which are analyzed and ranked by algorithms, are designed to give users the most relevant result based on their query.

Orphan

A widow’s (see below) partner in crime, orphans is a single word (or very short line of two or three words) that sits on its own on a new line or new page/column. Like widows, they can be very frustrating but any designer worth their salt knows to always look out for these tricksy bits of text.

Orphan Page

Any webpage that is not linked to by any other pages on that website.

Outbound Link

A link that directs visitors to a page on a different website than the one they are currently on.

Page Speed

The amount of time it takes for a webpage to completely load. Page speed is ranking factor.

Page View

A request to load a single web page on the internet. Marketers use them to analyze their website and to see if any change on the webpage results in more or fewer page views.

PageRank

According to Google: “PageRank is the measure of the importance of a page based on the incoming links from other pages. In simple terms, each link to a page on your site from another site adds to your site’s PageRank. Not all links are equal.” The algorithm was named after Google co-founder Larry Page.

Paid Search

Pay-per-click advertisements that appear above (and often below) the organic results on search engines.

Palette

A palette is the color scheme that is chosen for a specific design or brand—making up part of a brand’s style guide. A palette should be carefully chosen so that the colors in it work harmoniously together and help make a design as successful as possible. The term comes from an artists’ palette, which is a board or slab where artists would lay and mix different paint colors.

Pandora

Pandora is a social online radio station that allows users to create stations based on their favorite artists and types of music.

Pantone (PMS)

The Pantone Matching System is a standardised color scheme used for printing, in addition to graphic design, it is used in a number of other industries including product and fashion design and manufacturing. Each color has it’s own individual number and name—this year’s Pantone color of the Year is

Pay Per Click (PPC)

The amount of money spent to get a digital advertisement clicked. Also an internet advertising model where advertisers pay a publisher (usually a search engine, social media site, or website owner) a certain amount of money every time their ad is clicked. For search engines, PPC ads display an advertisement when someone searches for a keyword that matches the advertiser's keyword list, which they submit to the search engine ahead of time. PPC ads are used to direct traffic to the advertiser's website, and PPC is used to assess the cost effectiveness and profitability of your paid advertising campaigns. There are two ways to pay for PPC ads: Flat rate: where the advertiser and publisher agree on a fixed amount that will be paid for each click. Typically this happens when publishers have a fixed rate for PPC in different areas on their website. Bid-based: where the advertiser competes against other advertisers in an advertising network. In this case, each advertiser sets a maximum spend to pay for a given ad spot, so the ad will stop appearing on a given website once that amount of money is spent. It also means that the more people that click on your ad, the lower PPC you'll pay and vice versa.

PBN

Stands for Private Blog Network. See: Link Farm.

PDF

Stands for Portable Document Format file. PDFs can contain text, images, links, videos, and other elements.

Penalty

See: Manual Action

Periscope

Periscope is a social video app that allows users to broadcast live video from wherever they are. App users also have the ability to engage with others videos, browse live or recent broadcasts, and follow users to receive notifications.

Permalink

A permalink is an address or URL of a particular post within a blog or website that remains indefinitely unchanged.

Persona

A fictionalized representation of an ideal website visitor or customer – their demographics, behavior, needs, motivations, and goals – all based on actual data. Also known as: Buyer Persona, Marketing Persona

Personalization

When search engines use search history, web browsing history, location, and relationships to create a set of search results tailored to a specific user.

PHP

Hypertext Preprocessor is a scripting language used to create dynamic content on webpages.

Pilcrow

A pilcrow is the name of the symbol, this one ¶, used to mark the beginning of a new paragraph or section of text. Pilcrows also appear on some software as a toolbar icon—it’s used on Adobe Photoshop as the icon for the paragraph tab, which allows the user to make changes to their paragraph structure. It’s also a great tidbit to know for any future pub quizzes.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a visual social network typically used by ecommerce marketers, but not without its fair share of top-notch B2B and B2C content marketers. Businesses and consumers alike use the website to post images and photos they like so fellow users can repin (share) that content. Not every company has taken advantage of this site yet. If you're one of them, we advise you check out this free guide to Pinterest for business.)

Piracy

Search engines aim to reduce the organic search rankings of content that infringes on copyright. Google introduced a filter in 2012 that reduces the visibility of sites reported for numerous DMCA-related takedown requests.

Pixel

It’s all good explaining the difference between pixels and dots, but what exactly is a pixel? A contraction of the words ‘picture’ and ‘element’, a pixel are the smallest basic unit of programmable color on a computer and all digital images are made up of a large number of individual pixels. Basically, they’re very, very small but very, very important.

Placeholder Text

You’ve probably seen the words ‘Lorem Ipsum’ before and thought “umm what?”—well, that’s a placeholder text, which can also be called a filler text or dummy text. The placeholder text is used for testing purposes—they fill the gap where the words will be in order to show where and how the final copy will sit. The words ‘Lorem Ipsum’ themselves have been the industry standard since the 1500s—and were invented randomly by an unknown printer.

Pocket 

cket is an app that enables users to manage a reading list of articles they've saved from the internet to read later. Pocket has an open API that allows it to integrate with over 500 applications including social networks like Twitter.

Podcast

A podcast is a series of digital media files, usually audio, that are released episodically and often downloaded through an RSS feed.

Pogo-sticking

When, after entering a query, a searcher bounces back and forth between a SERP and the pages listed in those search results. Also see: Dwell time

Point Size

The distance from the top of the highest ascender to the bottom of the lowest descender is the point size of any given typeface. Originally, this was the height of the face of the metal block on which each individual letter was cast.

Position

See: Rank

PPI / DPI

The two measurements used to measure the resolution (see below). PPI stands for pixels per inch whilst DPI stands for dots per inch—they refer to the amount of pixels or dots, respectively, that can be placed in a line across one linear inch. PPI is used to describe the resolution of a digital image and DPI is used to describe the amount of ink dots per inch in a printed image. PPI can also affect the print size and quality of a design, but DPI has no affect on a digital design.

Printer’s Proof

Never underestimate the importance of a printer’s proof—these are mock-ups or a print sample of design that you can have in front of you, read, check and double check to ensure everything is correct and sign it off before sending it to the printer for the final print run.

Product Matrix

A product matrix is a chart that describes the various products a business offers and the features that apply to each product. Product matrices typically assign each version of a product its own column along the top, with the features included in each version listed in rows down the lefthand side. For example, a business that sells three versions of the same product -- and 10 potential features across this product -- could create a product matrix with three columns and 10 rows. In each cell where a column and row intersect, the business can include a symbol or checkmark indicating that this feature is included in this version of the product.

QDF

Stands for query deserves freshness, where a search engine might decide to show newer webpages in search results (rather than older pages) if a particular search term is trending, perhaps because a news event has resulted in a surge in searches on that topic.

QR Code

A QR code (abbreviated from Quick Response code) is a specific matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code) that is readable by dedicated QR barcode readers and camera telephones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded may be text, URL, or other data. It also starts with “Q,” which is a rarity with marketing-related terms.

Qualified Lead

A contact that opted in to receive communication from your company, became educated about your product or service, and is interested in learning more. Marketing and Sales often have two different versions of qualified leads (MQLs for Marketing, and SQLs for Sales), so be sure to have conversations with your sales team to set expectations for the types of leads you plan to hand over.

Quality Content

Content that helps you successfully achieve business or marketing goals (e.g., driving organic traffic or social shares, earning top search rankings, generating leads/sales).

Quality Link

An inbound link that originates from an authoritative, relevant, or trusted website.

Quantcast

Quantcast provides website traffic and demographics for websites. The tool is primarily used by online advertisers looking to target specific demographics.

Query

The word, words, or phrase that a user enters into a search engine.

Quick Keys / Shortcuts

Whatever you call them, quick keys or shortcuts are one of the most important things for a designer to know! They refer to the certain keys on your keyboard that allow you to carry out specific functions in a single click, rather than a longer, more complicated process. A majority of shortcuts combine pressing the cmd ⌘ key on Mac or the ctrl key on Windows and a combination of one or two letters, numbers or symbols. Here’s one to try—put your cursor on the word ‘shortcuts’ and press ⌘+ctrl+D.

Ragged Edge/Rag

Nothing to do with early 2000s R&B group Jagged Edge, ragged edges refers to when the body copy in a piece of design has uneven line lengths and the shape that this creates. They’re relatively easy to clean up through kerning and tracking—whose definitions can also be found in this article!

Rank

Where a webpage appears within the organic search results for a specific query.

Ranking Factor

An individual component which contributes to a complex series of algorithms that determine where webpages should appear with the organic search results for a specific query. For years, Google has said that its algorithms “rely on more than 200 unique signals” to help users find the most relevant webpage or answer. Also known as: Ranking Signal.

Raster

Another kind of graphic image, a raster (which can also be called a bitmap image) is an image made up of a certain number of pixels. Each pixel has its own color, hue, saturation and transparency which helps to make up the image as a whole. Unlike vectors, due to them being made up of pixels, raster images will lose quality and become blurry as they’re resized.

Readability

Degree to which text can easily be read.

Real-Time Marketing

Real-time marketing is a strategy that requires marketers to publish timely content as news breaks. For example, Oreo tweeted this quick-witted response to the 2013 Super Bowl blackout as it was unfolding. Recommendation - A recommendation on LinkedIn is a term used to describe a written note from another LinkedIn member that aims to reinforce the user's professional credibility or expertise. 

Real-Time Search

Real-time search is the method of indexing content being published online into search engine results with virtually no delay.

Reciprocal Links

When two websites agree to exchange links to one another.

Reddit

Reddit is a social news site that contains specific, topic-oriented communities of users who share and comment on stories.

Redirect

"A technique that sends a user (or search engine) who requested one webpage to a different (but equally relevant) webpage. There are three types of redirects:

• 301: Permanent
• 302: Temporary
• 410: Gone"

Referrer

URL data that identifies the source of a user’s webpage request.

Reinclusion

The process of asking a search engine to return a website or webpage(s) to its search index after de-indexing.

Relevance

A way search engines measure how closely connected the content of a webpage is aligned to match the context of a search query.

Repetition

Repetition simply means using the same element in a design more than once. Repetition simply means using the same element in a design more than once. Repetition simply means using the same element in a design more than once. It can create a sense of unity, cohesion and consistency.

Reply

A reply is a Twitter action that allows a user to respond to a tweet through a separate tweet that begins with the other user's @username. This differs from a mention, because tweets that start with an @username only appears in the timelines of users who follow both parties. 

Reputation Management

The practice of crafting a positive online perception of a brand or person – including in search results and on social media – by minimizing the visibility of negative mentions. Also known as: Online Reputation Management, Public Relations

Resolution

The term resolution refers to the number of units, measured in either DPI or PPI, that occupy a linear inch an image, both on screen and in print. Resolution is used to denote the quality of an image—it can generally be assumed that the higher the resolution, the better the quality of the image. You can tell if the resolution is too low as the image will appear blurry or pixelated.

Responsive Design

This is the practice of developing a website that adapts accordingly to how someone is viewing it. Instead of building a separate, distinct website for each specific device it could be viewed on, the site recognizes the device that your visitor is using and automatically generates a page that is responsive to the device the content is being viewed on -- making websites always appear optimized for screens of any dimension.

Responsive Website

A website designed to automatically adapt to a user’s screen size, whether it’s being viewed on a desktop or mobile device.

Retargeting

Retargeting is an online marketing and advertising technique that allows marketers to display ads to people who have visited their website or are part of their contacts database. For more on how a retargeting campaign works, check out this beginner's guide.

Return on Investment (ROI)

A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency and profitability of an investment, or to compare the efficiency and profitability of multiple investments. The formula for ROI is: (Gain from Investment minus Cost of Investment), all divided by (Cost of Investment). The result is expressed as a percentage or ratio. If ROI is negative, then that initiative is losing the company money. The calculation can vary depending on what you input for gains and costs. Today, marketers want to measure the ROI on every tactic and channel they use. Many facets of marketing have pretty straightforward ROI calculations (like PPC), but others are more difficult (like content marketing).

Retweet

A re-posting of a tweet posted by another user on Twitter. Retweets look like normal tweets except for the retweet icon. They can be done in three ways: 1) You can retweet an entire tweet by clicking the retweet button, indicated below. 2) You can post a new tweet that includes your own commentary. In a new tweet, which also features the original tweet. It means you've pressed the rotating arrow icon to retweet a post, and then added a comment in the text box provided. We prefer this method of retweeting because it allows you to add your own thoughts. (Note: The retweet takes up 24 characters, leaving you with 116 characters for the comment.) 3) You can post a new tweet that includes your own commentary in addition to the information you're retweeting. The formula is this: Your own commentary + RT + the original tweeter's Twitter handle + colon + the exact text from their original tweet. This method of retweeting allows you to add your own thoughts, but with a very limited character count. When you see "Please RT" in someone's tweet, it means they are requesting that their followers retweet that tweet to spread awareness.

RGB

Not to be confused with RBG (US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg), RGB stands, somewhat simply, for Red Green Blue, and is the color mode which should be used when designing for digital applications. The three colors, Red, Green and Blue, can be combined in many different proportions to create any color in the visible spectrum and as each color refers to light, they grow brighter the more they are combined—it’s not magic, it’s design.

Rich Snippet

Structured data can be added to the HTML of a website to provide contextual information to the search engines during crawling. This information can then be displayed in the SERPs, resulting in an enhanced listing, known as a rich snippet.

Right-aligned

When text is aligned to the right margin with the rag on the left side of the text frame.

robots.txt

The Robots Exclusion Protocol (or Standard) is a text file, accessible at the root of a website, that tells search engine crawlers which areas of a website should be ignored.

RSS Feed

RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blogs and videos in a standardized format. Content publishers can syndicate a feed, which allows users to subscribe to the content and read it when they please from a location other than the website (such as Feedly or other RSS readers).

RSS Reader

An RSS reader allows users to aggregate articles from multiple websites into one place using RSS feeds. The purpose of these aggregators is to allow for a faster and more efficient information consumption. 

Rule of Thirds

The rule of thirds is a helpful way of aligning the subject of an image and making it aesthetically pleasing as possible. Imagine a 3×3 grid (or even add one in Photoshop or InDesign) over your picture and align the picture’s subject with the guidelines or intersection points (where the lines meet) or allow the picture’s different elements to flow through the grid.

Sans Serif

Sans is French for ‘without’ so you can probably guess that San Serif Fonts are fonts without serifs on the end of their letters. Usually, sans serif fonts are easier to read on the web and digital screens—for instance, Apple use the sans serif font Helvetica Neue, across all their operating systems. Alongside Helvetica Neue, some of the most well known examples of sans serif fonts are Futura and Brandon Grotesque.

Saturation

Saturation is a term used in chemistry and photography, but design-wise it’s about color. Put simply, saturation is the intensity and brilliance of a color. Saturation is usually expressed as a number which represents the degree to which it differs from white—this means that, if the saturation is very low a color will appear white or close to it and if the saturation is very high a color will appear brighter and more intense.

Scale

Scale is the relative size of an object or the different objects within a single design. Scale is something that can be used very cleverly in a design and even be used to deliver a message. Two objects of the same scale are usually seen as being equal, whilst if one object is considerably larger then it could be seen as being more important. It can be used to create hierarchy or drama.

Schema

A form of microdata which, once added to a webpage, creates an enhanced description (commonly known as a rich snippet), which appears in search results.

Scrape

A technique used to copy website content or information using a computer program or script. Search engines, such as Google, scrape data in order to build a searchable index of websites.

Script Type

Script type is a font that is based on modern or traditional handwriting styles. There’s two forms of script fonts—formal and casual. Formal script fonts, the more traditional of the two, are based on seventeenth and eighteenth century letterforms. They are used, on documents like invitations and diplomas, to give a sense of elegance. Casual script fonts became popular in the 1970s and often appear to be created by a wet brush—showing a more active hand.

Search Engine

A computer program that enables users to enter a query in order to retrieve information (e.g., files, websites, webpages) from that program’s index (i.e., a web search engine, such as Google, indexes websites, webpages, and files found on the World Wide Web). A search index is built and updated using a crawler, with items being analyzed and ranked by a series of algorithms.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

An umbrella term for increasing a website’s visibility in search engine results pages, encompassing both paid and organic activities.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is the process of improving the volume or quality of unpaid traffic to a website from search engines.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The practice of enhancing where a webpage appears in search results. By adjusting a webpage's on-page SEO elements and influencing off-page SEO factors, an inbound marketer can improve where a webpage appears in search engine results. There are a ton of components to improving the SEO of your site pages. Search engines look for elements including title tags, keywords, image tags, internal link structure, and inbound links -- and that's just to name a few. Search engines also look at site structure and design, visitor behavior, and other external, off-site factors to determine how highly ranked your site should be in the search engine results pages. Successful SEO makes a site appealing to users and search engines.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

The page search engines display to users after conducting a search. Typically, search engines show about 10 organic search results, sorted by relevance. Depending on the query, other search features may be shown, including:

• AdWords Ads (above and below the organic search results)
• Featured snippets (a.k.a., Position Zero)
• Images
• Knowledge panels
• Local Pack (with map)
• News
• Related questions
• Related searches
• Shopping results
• Sitelinks
• Tweets
• Videos

Search History

Search engines track every search users conduct (text and voice), every webpage visited, and every ad clicked on. Search engines may use this data to personalize the results for signed in users.

Selfie

A selfie is a self-portrait that is typically taken using the reverse camera screen on a smartphone or by using a selfie stick (a pole that attaches to your camera). Selfies are commonly shared on social media networks like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook using the hashtag #selfie. 

Sender Score

An email marketing term that refers to a reputation rating from 0-100 for every outgoing mail server IP address. Mail servers will check your Sender Score before deciding what to do with your emails. A score of over 90 is good.

Serif

A serif is the small line that appears on the end of a letter in some typefaces—these typefaces are known as Serif Fonts. Serif fonts are easier to read in printed designs as the serifs make letters more distinctive and their shape makes even letter easier to recognise. Famous examples of serif fonts include Baskerville, Times New Roman and Garamond.

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

For marketers, an SLA is an agreement between a company's sales and marketing teams that defines the expectations Sales has for Marketing and vice versa. The Marketing SLA defines expectations Sales has for Marketing with regards to lead quantity and lead quality, while the Sales SLA defines the expectations Marketing has for Sales on how deeply and frequently Sales will pursue each qualified lead. SLAs exist to align sales and marketing. If the two departments are managed as separate silos, the system fails. For companies to achieve growth and become leaders in their industries, it is critical that these two groups be properly integrated.

Share of Voice

How many impressions a brand receives in the SERPs for search terms when compared to the total impressions that the brand’s competitors receive for those same search terms.

Shoulder

A curved stroke connected to a stem.

Sitelinks

Up to six algorithmically-chosen links that appear below the listing for the same website of a top-ranked organic search result. Pages can be blocked from appearing as sitelinks within the Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools.

Sitemap

A list of pages on a website. There are two types of sitemaps:

HTML

This type of sitemap, typically organized by topics, helps site users navigate a website.

XML

This type of sitemap provides crawlers with a list of webpages on a website.

Sitewide Links

A link that appears on every page of a website, typically in a sidebar or footer of blogs or websites that use templates.

Skeuomorphism

A word that is fun to both say and write, skeuomorphism is when something, most usually a digital element, is designed to look like a physical replica of that thing, while not behaving in the same way or necessarily having the same function. Apple Macs have several examples of skeuomorphs on their operating system—have a look at the phonebook icon for the Contacts app for one such example.

Skype

Skype is a free program that allows for text, audio, and video chats between users. Additionally, users can purchase plans to place phone calls through their Skype account.

Slab Serif Type

We’re not done yet with serifs, Slab Serif fonts are an offshoot of serif fonts that are characterised by thick serifs—the serifs can either be block or rounded. One popular example of a rounded slab serif font is Courier, which was widely used in typewriters. Slab serifs became popular in the nineteenth century as printed advertising became widespread.

Small-to-Medium Business (SMB)

Usually defined as companies that have between 10 and 500 employees.

Smarketing

A fun phrase used to refer to the practice of aligning Sales and Marketing efforts. In a perfect world, marketing would pass off tons of fully qualified leads to the sales team, who would then subsequently work every one of those leads enough times to close them 100% of the time. But since this isn't always how the cookie crumbles, it’s important for Marketing and Sales to align efforts to impact the bottom line the best they can through coordinated communication.

Snap Map

The Snap Map is a feature of Snapchat that allows you to see where your friends are as well as hot spots where people are publicly posting stories.

Snapchat

A social app that allows users to send and receive time-sensitive photos and videos known as "snaps," which are hidden from the recipients once the time limit expires. (Note: Images and videos still remain on the Snapchat server). Users can add text and drawings to their snaps and control the list of recipients in which they send them to.

Snapchat Story

A Snapchat story is a string of Snapchats that lasts for 24 hours. Users can create stories to be shared with all Snapchatters or just a customized group of recipients.

Social Inbox

Social Inbox is an app in the HubSpot software that plugs into your contacts database and allows users to optimize their social monitoring, publishing, and analysis.

Social Media

Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Google+ are examples of social media networks that one can join for personal or business use. Social Media is a core component of Inbound, as it provides marketers with additional channels to spread reach, increase growth, and reach business goals.

Social Media Monitoring

Social media monitoring is a process of monitoring and responding to mentions related to a business that occur in social media.

Social Proof

Social proof refers to a psychological phenomenon in which people seek direction from those around them to determine how they are supposed to act or think in a given situation. It's like when you see a really long line outside a nightclub and assume that club is really good because it's in such high demand. In social media, social proof can be identified by the number of interactions a piece of content receives or the number of followers you have. The idea is that if others are sharing something or following someone, it must be good.

Social Selling

Social selling is a sales concept in which representatives leverage the power of social communication to engage with prospects by answering their questions, providing helpful content, clarifying information, etc. 

Social Signal

Any factors that demonstrate authority and influence on popular social networking websites. For example, the social authority of a user on Twitter. Although many correlation studies have indicated that socials signals impact rankings (e.g., number of Likes/shares a piece of content receives), Google has publicly stated that social signals are not a direct ranking factor. Popular sites that have a lot of social media engagement tend to rank well for other reasons.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

Any software that is hosted by another company, which stores your information in the cloud. Examples: HubSpot, Salesforce, IM clients, and project management applications.

Spam

See: Webspam

Spider

See: Bot

Split Testing

A controlled experiment used to compare at least two webpages to measure the effects of a different variable on conversions. After the pages are shown for a long enough period of time to site visitors to gather an adequate amount of performance data, a “winner” can be declared. Also known as: A/B Testing.

Spotify

Like Pandora, Spotify is a music streaming service with a social media twist. Not only can you share what you're listening to with other social networks, but you can also see what your friends are listening to or listen to their playlists directly from the platform. 

SSL Certificate

A digital certificate used for website identity authentication and to encrypt information sent to the server using Secure Sockets Layer technology.

Status Codes

The response codes sent by a server whenever a link is clicked, a webpage or file is requested, or a form is submitted. Common HTTP status codes important to SEO:

• 200
(OK)
• 404
(Not Found)
• 410
(Gone)
• 500
(Internal Service Error)
• 503
(Service Unavailable)

Stem

A vertical stroke in a letterform. Can be found in both lowercase and uppercase letters.

Stock Photo

Stock photos are licensed images that designers are able to use so they don’t have to organise an entire photoshoot to get the images they need for a project. The stock photo industry has been around since the 1920s and there’s stock photographs for pretty much everything—from wildlife to sport to architecture and everything in between—even the infamous

Stop Word

Story

A Snapchat, Facebook, or Instagram story is a string of videos or images that lasts for 24 hours. Users can create stories to be shared publicly or just a customized group of recipients. 

Stress

A diagonal or vertical change in stroke width across a letter.

Stroke

Any linear feature on a letter.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is a free web-browser extension that acts as an intelligent browsing tool for discovering and sharing web sites.

Style Guide

A style guide is an important part of branding. They determine the correct set of standards for the branding of a business or publication—anything from a business card to a multi-page website. A style guide is used to ensure that all a brands’ assets have complete uniformity and are kept looking spick and span. Now you know what a style guide is, you’ll definitely keep noticing when brands have one!

Subdomain

A separate section that exists within a main domain. For example: https://jobs.normalbear.com/ is a subdomain that exists within the main domain of https://www.normalbear.com/

Subreddit

Discussion board dedicated to a specific topic on reddit. 

Swash

Addition of a decorative stroke in typography.

Symmetry

In everyday terms, symmetry refers to a sense of harmonious balance and proportion. It’s something most people are introduced to at an early age. In design terms, one of the fundamental principles of design, it does much the same—symmetry is used to add balance and create a sense of harmony in a design.

System Font

Main font used by a computer operating system.

Tag

Tagging is a social media functionality commonly used on Facebook and Instagram that allows users to create a link back to the profile of the person shown in the picture or targeted by the update. 

Taxonomy

Organizing and categorizing a website to maximize content findability and help users complete desired on-site tasks.

Terminal

Any stroke which does not terminate in a serif is a terminal. It can be either straight or curved.

Texture

In design, texture refers to the visual appearance of a design. In others, adding rich, layered graphics to a design can help to create a visual texture. Designs can also imitate textures such as metal or fabric to likewise create a visual texture or add a fabricated tactile feel. Finally, texture can also be added to a print design through printing on different paper stocks or materials.

Thread

A series of comments or discussion posts on a post or in a subreddit.

Thumbnail

A thumbnail is a small, rough sketches of how a designer wants their design to look—they can be used to help decide upon a layout or how a design will come together. They’re usually done by hand in the very early stages of a design so all the different options can be explored before any work is done on a computer.

TikTok

TikTok is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms of all time, The app, beloved by Gen Z, is similar to Vine in that it highlights bitesized looping videos that can also have musical overlays. 

Time on Page

An inexact estimation of how long a user spent looking at a particular webpage. Pages with high exit rates can greatly skew this data.

Title Tag

An HTML meta tag that acts as the title of a webpage. Typically, the title tag is the title search engines use when displaying search listings, so it should include strategic and relevant keywords for that specific page. The title tag should also be written so it makes sense to people and attracts the most clicks. Typically, title tags should be less than 65 characters.

Tittle

A tittle (also known as, the much less interesting, superscript dot) is a small distinguishing mark—most commonly used to refer to the dot on a lowercase i or j. Tittles also appear above other letters in various other languages. It’s also a great fact to know for your next pub quiz.

Tofu

Probably the most delicious word in this list, tofu is slang that refers to the little squares that are displayed when a typeface is not loaded on to a computer or when a font doesn’t have a specific glyph. Noto is a font family that aims to remove tofu from the web entirely—it’s short for ‘No tofu’.

Top of the Funnel

Sometimes called “TOFU”, top of the funnel refers to the very first stage of the buying process. Leads at this stage are just identifying a problem that they have and are looking for more information. As such, an inbound marketer will want to create helpful content that aids leads in identifying this problem and providing next steps toward a solution. TOFU is also very tasty in certain Thai dishes.

Top-Level Domain (TLD)

The extension of a given web address. These include:

• .gov
• .edu
• .com
• .org
• .net
• .info

Tracking

Though they are similar, be careful not to confuse tracking with kerning. Tracking is the spacing of an entire word or paragraph (not just between two letters)—the act of tracking changes the space between every letter in a word/paragraph at the same time. It can be used to change the density and structure of a word or paragraph.

Traffic

The people (and sometimes bots) who visit your website.

Trending Topic

Trending topics refer to the most talked about topics and hashtags on a social media network. These commonly appear on networks like Twitter and Facebook and serve as clickable links in which users can either click through to join the conversation or simply browse the related content. 

Triadic Colors

Triadic colors, or a triadic color scheme, are three colors that are equally dispersed around a color wheel. The most common of these are the primary colors; red, yellow and blue. Triadic colors tend to be more vibrant than complementary or analogous colors so it’s important to consider how the colors balance together—there should be one dominant color and the others used as secondary colors or accents.

Troll

A troll or internet troll refers to a person who is known for creating controversy in an online setting. They typically hang out in forums, comment sections, and chat rooms with the intent of disrupting the conversation on a piece of content by providing commentary that aims to evoke a reaction. 

Trust

Generally applies to the history of a domain (e.g., whether it cites or features expert sources, builds a positive reputation, adheres to Webmaster Guidelines).

TrustRank

A link analysis technique used to separate good “reputable seed pages” from web spam.

Tumblr

Tumblr is a microblogging platform that allows users to post text, images, video, audio, links, and quotes to their blog. Users can also follow other blogs and repost other users' content to their own blog.

Tweepi

Tweepi is a social media management tool that provides users with a platform for simplifying the way they manage their social following. It's typically used for mass following or unfollowing a group of people based on certain criteria. 

Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck is a Twitter tool that provides users with a way to manage their Twitter presence through custom columns. The platform integrates with the Twitter API to allow users to both send and receive tweets.

Twitch

Twitch is a live streaming social platform which gained notoriety when gamers used it to stream their video game skills. Recently, brands have also begun to experiment with the platform. 

Twitter 

itter is a real-time social network that allows users to share 140-character updates with their following. Users can favorite and retweet the posts of other users, as well as engage in conversations using @ mentions, replies, and hashtags for categorizing their content. 

Twitter Topics

A recently launched Twitter feature that allows users to follow specific topic categories from marketing, to politics, to birdwatching. Once users follow topics, they'll see more content related to these categories on their feeds. 

Twitterverse

Also referred to as the Twittersphere, Twitterverse is a nickname for the community of users who are active on Twitter. 

Type Classification

Type of characters based on style.

Type Properties

Specific qualities that allow characters to fit on a grid.

Type Size

The distance from the top of the highest ascender to the bottom of the lowest descender. It is usually measured in points.

Typeface Design

The process of creating a complete set of characters in a specific style. This could include uppercase and lowercase characters, mathematical symbols, punctuation, numerals, etc.

Typesetting

The process of laying out large amounts of text (e.g., a book, a magazine, etc.) and making sure it’s legible and readable.

Typography

The term typography refers to two things. Firstly, the style and appearance of printed words. Secondly and more importantly, it refers to the art and procedure of arranging type to make it readable, legible, attractive and engaging in print or digital designs. Typography is something that all graphic designers will deal with in their careers—whether they are working at a type foundry, creating their own typefaces, or working in UX design.

Unique Visitor

A person who visits a website more than once within a period of time. Marketers use this term in contrast with overall site visits to track the amount of traffic on their website. If only one person visits a webpage 30 times, then that web page has one UV and 30 total site visits.

Universal Search

When search engines pull data from multiple speciality databases to display on the same SERP. Results can include images, videos, news, shopping, and other types of results. Also known as: Blended Search.

Unnatural Link

Any links Google identifies as suspicious, deceptive, or manipulative. An unnatural link can result in Google taking manual action on your website.

Uppercase

Uppercase characters are the capital letters of the alphabet. Uppercase letters are normally used at the beginning of sentences and as the first letter of proper names. The term uppercase is derived from the days of metal type where the lesser used capital letters were kept in the harder to reach upper case while the more frequently used letters were kept nearer at hand, in the lower case.

URL

A uniform resource locator is the specific string of characters that lead to a resource on the web. The term URL is usually short-hand for the letter-based web address (e.g., www.normalbear.com) entered into a browser to access a webpage.

URL Parameter

The values added to a URL in order to track where traffic comes from (i.e., which link someone clicked on to discover your website or webpage).

Here’s an example of a URL parameter:

https://www.normalbear.com/example-article-url/999999/?utm_source=share-back-traffic&utm_medium=desktop-share-button&utm_campaign=twitter

Usability

How easy it is for people to use your website. Site design, browser compatibility, disability enhancements, and other factors all play a role in improving usability and making your site accessible for as many people as possible.

User

ntent (or UGC) - User-generated content is content -- blogs, videos, photos, quotes, etc. -- that is created by consumers. Marketers typically tap into their audience in an online setting to collect this type of content to support a campaign or initiative. 

User Agent

Web crawling software.

User Experience (UX)

The overall feeling users are left with after interacting with a brand, its online presence, and its product/services.

User Interface (UI)

A type of interface that allows users to control a software application or hardware device. A good user interface provides a user-friendly experience by allowing the user to interact with the software or hardware in an intuitive way. It includes a menu bar, toolbar, windows, buttons, and so on.

User-Generated Content (UGC)

Any form of content – videos, blog posts, comments, reviews, etc. – that is created by users or customers.

Vector

A vector is a graphic image that is made with mathematical equations—they’re defined in terms of 2D points connected by lines and curves to form shapes. Basically this means that vectors can be resized or scaled to any size without losing quality or getting blurry. They’re very, very useful!

Vertex

The bottom point where two strokes are joined together.

Vertical Search

A specialized type of search where the focus is only on a specific topic, type of content, or media. For example, YouTube (video), Amazon (shopping), Kayak (travel), Yelp (business reviews).

Vine

Founded in 2012 and discontinued in 2017, Vine was a social video sharing service where users could create and engage with short-form, six-second video clips. Videos published through the service were easily shared across other social platforms such a Twitter and Facebook.

Viral

Viral is a term used to describe an instance in which a piece of content -- YouTube video, blog article, photo, etc. -- achieves noteworthy awareness. Viral distribution relies heavily on word of mouth and the frequent sharing of one particular piece of content all over the internet.

Viral Content

This term is used to describe a piece of content that has become wildly popular across the web through sharing. Oftentimes, folks don’t know a piece they’re creating will be viral until it actually does, which is usually unfortunate if it’s particularly embarrassing.

Virtual Assistant

A bot that uses natural language processing to perform tasks, such as conducting web searches. For instance, Apple’s Siri or Microsoft’s Cortana.

Visibility

The prominence and positions a website occupies within the organic search results.

Vlogging

Vlogging or a vlog is a piece of content that employs video to tell a story or report on information. Vlogs are common on video sharing networks like YouTube. 

Voice Search

A type of voice-activated technology that allows users to speak into a device (usually a smartphone) to ask questions or conduct an online search.

Webinar

A webinar is an online seminar or presentation that is hosted by an individual or a company. Most often, the host requires attendees to fill out a form before granting them access to stream the audio and slides. In marketing, webinars are held to educate audiences about a particular topic while opening up the floor for a discussion to occur on social media using the webinar's unique hashtag. 

Webpage

A document that exists on the World Wide Web and can be viewed by web browsers.

Website

A website is a set of interconnected webpages, usually including a homepage, generally located on the same server, and prepared and maintained as a collection of information by a person, group, or organization. An inbound marketer should structure a website like a dynamic, multi-dimensional entity that can be used to attract relevant website visitors, convert those visitors into leads, and close those leads into customers.

Website Navigation

How a website connects its webpages to help visitors navigate that site. Website navigation comes in a few different forms, including:

Main Navigation

The major topics or subjects your website is focused on. For instance, on NB our Main Navigation consists of SEO, News, PPC, Content, and Social.

Secondary Navigation

Topics related to the main navigation. For instance, on NB secondary navigation includes links to webinars, podcasts, guides, Normal Bear Summit, and other topics.

Footer Navigation

Typically this includes links to pages that contain important informational resources about a brand or business. These pages usually aren’t important for ranking purposes. For example, NB’s footer navigation links to our About Us page, privacy policy, and our various social profiles.

Related Links

This area usually appears in the right rail or beneath content. It might be called “Most Popular,” “Most Read,” or “Trending Now.”

Content Links

Links that appear within your main content (e.g., articles, landing pages).

Breadcrumb Navigation

This type is less popular than it once was. Essentially, each webpage shows a “trail” to help quickly tell visitors where they are on your site. For example: Home > SEO > Link Building > What Is Website Navigation?

Webspam

Any methods that exist solely to deceive or manipulate search engine algorithms and/or users.

WhatsApp

WhatsApp is a messaging, phone, and social media app that allows people to connect internationally over a Wi-Fi network.

White Hat

Tactics that comply with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

White Space

White space, despite its seemingly misleading name, does not need to be white. It is the space, which can be any color, pattern or texture, between different elements in a design that are essential in creating a successful design. Think of white space as giving a design visual breathing room, like some sort of design meditation. It can also be called negative space—which is slightly less misleading.

Widows

In typesetting, widows are the lines of text that are separated from the main body of paragraph—usually the end of a paragraph that goes over on to a new page or column or the opposite of that, the start of a paragraph that is at the very bottom of a page. They’re the bane of a designer’s life.

Word Count

The total number of words that appear within the copy of content. Too little (or thin) content can be a signal of low-quality to search engines.

Word-of-Mouth (WOM)

The passing of information from person to person. Technically, the term refers to oral communication, but today it refers to online communication, as well. WOM marketing is inexpensive, but it takes work and involves leveraging many components of inbound marketing like product marketing, content marketing, and social media marketing.

WordPress

A popular blogging and content management system.

Workflow

A workflow is another way to describe a lead nurturing campaign. It’s a set of triggers and events that move a lead through the nurturing process. A workflow can also serve other purposes, such as adjust contact properties on a lead record based on certain conditions, or adding a contact record to a certain list. Regardless of how you use it, workflows can be a very powerful asset in an inbound marketing strategy.

X-Height

X-Height refers very literally to the height of a lowercase x in a specific font. You may question why such a specific height is so important, but the x-height affects the proportion of any font and, in turn, its legibility. It can generally be assumed that as the x-height increases, legibility improves.

XML

Extensible Markup Language is a markup language search engines use to understand website data.

XML Sitemap

A file of code that lives on your web server and lists all of the relevant URLs that are in the structure of your website. It's kind of like a "floor plan" for the site, which especially comes in handy whenever the site gets changed. It also helps search engine web crawlers determine the structure of the site so they can crawl it more intelligently. Sitemaps don't guarantee all links will be crawled, and being crawled does not guarantee indexing. However, a sitemap is still the best insurance for getting a search engine to learn about your entire site. It’s sort of like saying “Hey, Google -- check out this fine website.

Yahoo

Yahoo was born in April 1994 and was an incredibly popular search engine and portal in the ’90s. Yahoo search was mostly human-powered, at least until June 2000 when a then-unknown search engine called Google began powering Yahoo’s organic search results. That deal continued until 2004, when Yahoo started using its own search technology. Since 2010, Yahoo’s organic search results have been powered by Microsoft’s search engine, Bing.

Yandex

The most popular search engine in Russia, Yandex was founded September 23, 1997 by Arkady Volozh and Ilya Segalovich.

Yelp

Technically Yelp isn't a social media platform. But, it is a great way to spread awareness if you're a business owner. The platform one of the leading sites for online recommendations. 

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos. Three former PayPal employees created YouTube in February 2005. In November 2006, YouTube, LLC was bought by Google Inc. for $1.65 billion, and is now operated as a subsidiary of Google. YouTube is the largest video-sharing site in the world.

Zapier

Zapier is a software that leverages "zaps" to connect apps and provides users with a way to automate tasks. Zaps are automations that contain both Triggers and Actions. For example, you can connect your Twitter with your Evernote to save your favorited tweets to a folder, or connect Facebook and Twitter to tweet posts from a Facebook Page.